Attributed to Bernardo Parenzano

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Attributed to Bernardo Parenzano
1437-1531
Triumphal Procession with Elephant
ca. 1490
Pen and brown ink on laid paper.
12 13/16 x 16 3/8 inches (325 x 416 mm)
Gift of Janos Scholz.
1981.87
Notes: 

This is one of a group of drawings formerly attributed to the Venetian monk Bernardo Parentino but now instead associated with an artist named Bernardino from Parenzo, in Croatia, who had worked for Francesco II Gonzaga in Mantua in the 1480s and was then in Padua by the 1490s. The drawings (see also inv. I, 80) exhibit the fascination with all'antica motifs so common to Mantuan and Paduan art in the wake of Squarcione, Mantegna, and Zoppo. Intensely worked, the drawing was likely produced as a finished work for humanist collectors rather than as a preparatory study for a painting or print.
Watermark: none visible through lining.

Inscription: 

Inscribed at lower right, in pen and brown ink, "Pietro di St. Sepulcro".

Provenance: 
Earls of Pembroke (no mark; see Lugt 2183); Charles Fairfax Murray, London; L.D. Cunliffe; P. & D. Colnaghi and Co., London; Hans M. Calmann?, London; purchased in London in 1950 by Janos Scholz, New York (no mark; see Lugt S. 2933b).
Associated names: 

Pembroke, Earl of, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Cunliffe, L. D., former owner.
Calmann, Hans M., former owner.
Scholz, János, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Windows, Peter. An important, unpublished drawing by Bernardo Parentino. Master Drawings, vol. 55, no. 3 (2017), repr. (as Master of the Scholz Triumphal Procession)
Ryskamp, Charles, ed., Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, p. 286.
Draftsman's Eye, Cleveland, 1981, no. 117, repr. (includes previous bibliography and exhibitions).

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