A. E. Popham suggested that, based on its style, the present drawing probably dates from Parmigianino’s pre-Roman period.1 Citing the figure’s plasticity and the antique manner of the drapery folds, Achim Gnann instead dated the drawing to the period after the artist’s move to the Eternal City.2
The theme of the heroine who stabs herself recurs in Parmigianino’s œuvre, in drawings of the death of Dido and Lucretia, and in a lost painting of Lucretia. Lucretia is invariably depicted indoors, however, which aroused the suspicion of Popham, who correctly identified the subject of the Morgan drawing as Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (IV, 55-165). Here, the story is told of Pyramus, who stabs himself to death, believing that his lover, Thisbe, has been killed by a lioness. Thisbe, actually unharmed, finds him dying and follows him to his death under the tree where she has found him. She cries: “And you, O tree, already sheltering one hapless body, soon to shelter two,” and “placed the sword blade beneath her breast, and fell forward on the steel, which was still warm from Pyramus’ death.”
The palm trees, lightly sketched in red chalk on the verso of the sheet, reappear in Parmigianino’s early painting of Saint Catherine with Two Putti, now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.3
Popham suggested that the Morgan sheet is the one listed as no. 78 in the 1561 inventory of the Cavaliere Francesco Baiardo as “a drawing in red chalk of Thisbe killing herself with the sword, half finished and half sketched” (Un’ disegno di lapis rosso, d’una tisbe passata dalla spada mezza finite, è mezza bozzata).4 Konrad Oberhuber and Dean Walker questioned this, noting that the Morgan sheet is more than half finished, but in the opinion of the Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Popham’s contribution might be reconsidered.
Footnotes:
- Popham 1971, 1: 225, no. 787.
- Gnann 2007, 1: 418, no. 433.
- Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, inv. 1496.
- Popham 1971, 1: 225, no. 787.
Watermark: none.
Baiardo, Cavaliere, former owner.
Cavalaca, Marcantonio, former owner.
Crozat, M. (Pierre), 1661-1740, former owner.
Banks, Thomas, 1735-1805, former owner.
Triqueti, Henri Joseph François, baron de, 1804-1874, former owner.
Goldstein, Max A. (Max Aaron), 1870-1941, former owner.
Scholz, János, former owner.
Selected references: Oakland and elsewhere 1956, no. 70; Fröhlich-Bum 1958, 10, no. 2; Hagerstown 1960, no. 26; Staten Island 1961, no. 27; Hamburg and Cologne 1963-64, no. 108; Notre Dame and Binghampton 1970, 77-78, no. D16l; Norton 1971, no. 16; Popham 1971, 1: 225, no. 787; Providence 1973, 30, no. 29; Washington and New York 1973-74, 71, no. 58; Fellows Report 1984, 276; Gnann 2007, 1: 418, no. 433.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, p. 276.
Oberhuber, Konrad, and Dean Walker. Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings From the Collection of János Scholz. Washington, D.C. : National Gallery of Art ; New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1973, no. 58, repr. (includes previous bibliography and exhibitions).