Attributed to Jacopo Zanguidi, called Il Bertoia

Everhard Jabach (1618-1695), Paris (L.960a, in red chalk, verso);

Pierre Crozat (1665-1740), Paris (his numbering, lower right, 128);

Charles Paul Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart, Comte de Saint-Morys (1743-1795), Paris and London (L.474);

Private collection;

sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 1987, lot 27 (as attributed to Bertoia);

Private collection, Kent, England, 1987-2001;

with Day & Faber Ltd., London, 2001,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 19 (as Jacopo Zanguidi, called Il Bertoia) (entry by Rhoda Eitel-Porter);

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Rome After Raphael, 2010, (no printed catalogue);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 18 (as Jacopo Zanguidi, called Il Bertoia)

D. DeGrazia, Bertoia, Mirola and the Farnese Court, Bologna 1991, p. 139, no. D / attr. 4, reproduced fig. 245;

B. Py, Everhard Jabach Collectionneur (1618-1695): Les dessins de l’inventaire de 1695, Paris 2001, p. 254, no. 1128

When Diane DeGrazia first published this rare and fascinating view of the Palazzo Salviati on the banks of the Tiber as attributed to Bertoia (see Literature), she rightly observed that the old attribution to the artist inscribed on the drawing, which could only refer to Jacopo Zanguidi, called Il Bertoia, 'should be taken into account'.

Bertoia is first documented in Rome in 1568 around the time that the renovation of the imposing Palazzo Salviati, which is the subject of this drawing, was completed. The palazzo, located on the western bank or Vatican side of the Tiber, and today a public building (the Istituto Alti Studi per la Difesa), was largely renovated by Cardinal Bernardino Salviati (1508-1568) between 1556 and 1564, but as Eitel-Porter has clarified (see Exhibited) the last phase of construction, which included work on the gardens, took place from 1565 to 1568, so that the building was not completed until late 1568. Purchased by Cardinal Giovanni Salviati (1490-1553) in 1552, the palace was inherited at his death by his brother Bernardino, who became cardinal in February 1561. He entrusted its renovation to the architect Nanni di Baccio Bigio, in 1557. Following Bernadino’s death in 1568, the palace was completed by his nephew, Cardinal Antonio Maria Salviati (1537-1602).

A very rare example of a view executed by a Parmese artist, this drawing must have been done from life, most probably for the artist's own pleasure. It records the appearance of the palace’s central façade, decorated with three escutcheons - probably destined for the papal and Salviati coats of arms - below a central balcony. The grand façade rises above the pedestrian street, the Via della Lungara, and the larger Lungotevere Gianicolense, which run alongside this stretch of the raised banks of the Tiber. As Nicholas Turner noted in 2001, it is likely that Bertoia’s viewpoint when making this drawing was the Oratorio del Gonfalone, located on the opposite, eastern bank of the Tiber, from where he would have had a virtually unobstructed view of the Palazzo Salviati.¹

Beautifully drawn with delicate but reassured strokes of pen and ink, the present sheet is subtly washed in light brown to suggest the light, falling from above left, onto the river banks, and the buildings above. The handsome palace is the focus of the view, but as Eitel-Porter observed, the scene also encompasses details of the landscape that surrounds it: ‘the houses nestled along its sides; the steep, unadorned river banks; the occasional fortified embankment; and stone steps leading down to the river, a boathouse, and a moored barge.'

In the penwork, we see various areas of parallel hatching, running in different, contrasting directions, as well as some cross-hatching, especially on the buildings. Though the artist is very accurate and controlled in the description of the architectural setting, his juxtaposition of short and longer strokes, and the fluidity and spontaneity in the description of nature - trees, shrubs and grass - adds a poetic yet vibrant aspect to the view. The only living creatures to be seen in this serene view are a lone donkey, grazing on a promontory, and one small female figure, to the lower left.

As Diane DeGrazia observed when describing this drawing in her publication devoted to Bertoia and Mirola (see Literature), this example of a cityscape is unique within the artist’s oeuvre, 'but the handling of the few lines of greenery is not especially foreign to his hand.' Indeed, the foliage is very much what one would expect from Bertoia, both in its rounded and lush forms and in the fluid handling of the pen, so reminiscent of Parmigianino's graphic style. The majority of Bertoia's frescoes contain landscape backgrounds, but these element are generally somewhat generic, if beautifully decorative; like the present sheet, though, they always betray his Emilian origin.

Although he always retained his independent artistic personality, Bertoia absorbed a number of significant influences during his artistic journey. First, he looked at Parmigianino, before discovering the merits of the many artists, like the Zuccari, whom he encountered in Rome, where he also assimilated the grandeur of Roman antique art, and the lessons both of earlier masters like Raphael and Michelangelo, and of mannerist artists like Perino and Salviati. Yet although he was clearly influenced by these enriching Roman experiences, his style remains essentially Parmese, his draftsmanship always indebted to Parmigianino's imaginative elegance and lightness of touch in the use of the pen and ink.

The drawing originates from the celebrated collections of Everhard Jabach (1618-1695) and Pierre Crozat (1665-1740). Jabach was the greatest private collector of drawings in the seventeenth century. German by birth, he lived in his native Cologne during his youth, before residing in Paris for nearly sixty years, from 1636.²

^1.See R. Eitel-Porter’s note in New York/Washington 2007, note 6, where she refers to a typescript entry on the drawing prepared by Turner circa 2001, for Day & Faber, Ltd.

^2.Py, loc. cit., 2001