Lorenzo Costa

Born in Ferrara around 1460, Lorenzo Costa first trained as an artist in his native town, probably with Cosimo Tura, although the influence of Ercole de’ Roberti is also apparent in his work. By 1483 he had transferred to Bologna, where he collaborated with the painter Francesco Francia and also received commissions from the influential Bentivoglio family. After Mantegna’s death in 1506, he was employed by Isabella d’Este in Mantua and succeeded Mantegna as principal painter at the Gon-zaga court in 1509. Costa is best known for his altarpieces and portraits.

The sensitively drawn head and sketch of a right hand were identified by A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey as studies by Costa for his ambitious panel painting of the Deposition, signed and dated 1504 and now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.¹ The delicate, precise modeling and figural type of the drawing recall Perugino—an influence that was strongest during Costa’s Bolognese years and that is also apparent in the painting. Indeed, before Popham and Pouncey’s publication, the drawing was classified as Umbrian school. The original location of the painting is unknown, but it was produced the year after Costa visited Rome. The bearded head of the Morgan sheet is preparatory to the male figure, either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, who supports Christ at left. The hand, drawn on a slightly smaller scale, is for the right hand of that same figure. A work in the British Museum on the verso of a pen sketch of four women—in red chalk, of a left hand with a piece of cloth—is probably a study for the Virgin’s left hand, which in the drawing is holding the shroud.²

In technique, the Morgan drawing is comparable to a much larger sheet in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, bearing on the recto the Head of a Bearded Man, which is also worked up in brush on gray prepared paper.³ The Berlin study is likely a study for the head of the high priest in Costa’s painting of the Marriage of the Virgin, which is signed and dated 1505 and is now in the Pinacoteca, Bologna.

The Morgan’s Bearded Head is a particularly fine example of Costa’s capabilities as a draftsman. The artist used finely placed contour lines and hatching in metalpoint to adumbrate the forms, which now shimmer in a warm brown against the cooler gray of the prepared paper. A fine brush and gray ink was then used to both define the curls and strands of hair on the head, beard, and eyelashes that enliven the composition and create dense areas of shadow on the left side of the face and in the nape of the neck. Lastly, delicate white hatching was applied for high- lights on the forehead, temples, and collarbone and, in the study at upper left, the back of the hand. These elements combine into an unusually nuanced depiction of a male head gazing down, tight-lipped in grief and somber in expression as it inclines gently toward the body of Christ, and, ultimately, the viewer.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. See Negro and Roio 2001, no. 41.
2. British Museum, London, inv. 1881,0709.76. See Popham and Pouncey 1950, no. 43.
3. Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, KdZ 2382. See Schulze Altcappenberg 1995, 90–92.