Amico Aspertini

The purpose of the drawing, which is thought to date from the artist’s early maturity, ca. 1501-4, remains unknown. The stylistic and compositional proximity to a monochrome panel of the same subject, formerly in the collection of J.C. Robinson, London, was first noted by Venturoli in 1969, and has been cited several times since. Scaglietti (1969, 29-30) proposed a date of the early 1510s for the Robinson Crucifixion, which is cited by Faietti and Scaglietti Kelescian as too late for the Morgan drawing.

Anna Tambini recently proposed that the Morgan drawing is a study by Amico’s elder brother Guido Aspertini for a fresco of the Crucifixion that he is known to have painted beneath the portico of San Pietro, Bologna, in the period 1486-91. She further suggested that the Robinson panel is Amico’s later drawing of his brother’s fresco. This theory has, however, generally not been accepted, and the Morgan drawing considered to be sixteenth rather than fifteenth century.

As already noted by Scaglietti, the painting reveals the influence of northern art, especially that of Dürer, as well as Ercole de’ Roberti’s fresco of this subject in the Garganelli Chapel, San Pietro, Bologna (destroyed in early seventeenth century).