The study on the recto is one of two drawings by Beccafumi at the Morgan depicting the Roman hero Mucius Scaevola, who when captured by the enemy after his failure to slay Lars Porsenna, held his hand into the fire to prove the courage and determination of his people.1 The large sketch on the verso studies a figure very similarly posed in reverse, and one side may have originated as a tracing of the other. Despite their general correspondence, the two figures differ somewhat in their attitude. In contrast to the recto study, the verso figure turns his head in the direction of his raised hip and bent arm, while his opposite arm hangs down rather than being outstretched. Once the verso is turned one hundred and eighty degrees, a second male figure, with one leg raised and leaning forward more strongly than the others, becomes apparent.
Though neither side of the present sheet corresponds exactly to the highly finished red chalk study of Mucius Scaevola in the Morgan’s collection, Barbara Pike Gordley argued that the two sheets must be related and suggested that the former may have served as a preliminary study for the latter.2 Agreeing with this, Rhoda Eitel-Porter points out that the general pose of the recto study, with the arm bent and the hand resting on the hip, and even such details as the rectangular altar decorated with identical festoons, are too similar for the two sheets to be unrelated. One can even discern correspondences between some minor details, such as the lion’s head on the hero’s stockings, clearly visible in the red chalk version.
The purpose of the drawings has not yet been determined, and the dating has ranged from the period of the Palazzo Venturi frescoes, ca. 1520, to those of Sala del Concistoro, ca. 1529-35, and those of the apse of Siena Cathedral, ca.1540s.3 The architectural studies on the verso may represent primi pensieri for Beccafumi’s commission to decorate the apse of the Duomo, Siena, which the artist received in 1536, following the death of Baldassare Peruzzi. The two figures visible in the distance, however, seem to belong to a Crucifixion rather than to an Assumption of the Virgin, the subject painted by Beccafumi in the cathedral.
Footnotes:
- Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 1964.7.
- Gordley 1988, 188.
- For which, see inv. 1964.7.
The sheet has been trimmed to an octagonal.
Inscribed at upper center, in pen and brown ink, "31".
Watermark: Tip of a crown, extremely fragmentary.
Bloch, Victor, former owner.
Bloch, Victor, Mrs., former owner.
Selected references: New York 1965-66, 48, under no. 64; Providence 1973, 18, under no. 14; Gordley 1988, 163-64, 188-91, 203, 395, no. 86; De Marchi, in Siena 1990, 464-65, no. 131; Tenducci, in Torriti 1998, no. D92; Bolzoni, in New York 2019, 307-09, under no. 92.
Pierpont Morgan Library. Review of Acquisitions, 1949-1968. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1969, p. 130.
Adams, Frederick B., Jr. Fourteenth Annual Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1965 & 1966. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1967, p. 101-102.