Giovanni de' Vecchi

Traditionally attributed to the Sienese artist Ventura Salimbeni, as evidenced by the inscription at lower right, the drawing was reattributed to Giovanni de’ Vecchi by Philip Pouncey in 1958.¹ It was Patrizia Tosini who in 1994 identified the sheet as an early study for the Adoration of the Shepherds fresco on the altar on the left in the church of San Eligio degli Orefici in Rome, painted by de’ Vecchi in 1574–75.²

The fresco was commissioned by the goldsmiths’ (orefici) guild probably in anticipation of the 1575 Jubilee.³ The contract for the fresco is dated 21 April 1574 and the final payment was made on 3 October 1575.⁴ The commission more generically refers to a Birth of Christ (Nascita) rather than an Adoration of the Magi or Shepherds, and de’ Vecchi included in his design the magi with their retinue, as well as, at lower right, the shepherds. Although the prominent crowns and elaborate vessels in precious metal carried by the magi would have been particularly appropriate for a goldsmiths’ commission, these figures were eliminated in the final fresco, possibly to avoid a thematic overlap with a fresco by Federico Zuccaro in the chapel opposite. Painted several years earlier, in 1569, Federico’s Adoration of the Magi is no longer extant but is reproduced in an engraving by Jacob Matham.⁵ A second, more modest study, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, attributed to de’ Vecchi by Pouncey, was connected to the San Eligio composition by Nicola Knorn-Ezernieks.⁶

De’ Vecchi is said to have studied with Raffaellino del Colle in his native town of Borgo Sansepolcro, though this is not apparent in his art. He arrived in Rome as a young man in the 1560s and probably collaborated on the frescoes in the Apartments of Pius IV in the Vatican Palace (today the Museo Etrusco) between 1561 and 1564. In all likelihood he was among the team of artists who decorated the Villa d’Este at Tivoli in the late 1560s. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, for whom de’ Vecchi worked on frescoes at Caprarola, was among the artist’s most significant patrons.

It seems likely that by the mid-1560s de’ Vecchi had entered the orbit of Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro, who were to have a lasting and profound effect on his drawing style. Affinities to the draftsmanship of Florentine contemporaries such as Passignano and Santi di Tito— the latter also a native of Sansepolcro— are also apparent. Knorn-Ezernieks posited that de’ Vecchi knew Santi di Tito’s altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds of ca. 1566 in the church of San Giuseppe in Florence and took from it the foreground motif of the kneeling shepherd with a basket; both artists, however, may have been relying on an unidentified common source.⁷

Along with the Adoration of the Magi, the Morgan also holds de’ Vecchi’s Scene from Ancient History, another prime example of the draftsmanship of one of the major representatives of late Roman Mannerism.⁸ The distinctive and almost unprecedented use of mauve wash, seen in it as well as in the present work, is typical for de’ Vecchi’s drawings. Besides creating rich coloristic effects, it allowed for softer shadows than those created by the more usual brown wash.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. Note in departmental file for the drawing.
2. Tosini 1994, 307. Tosini (346) also discovered that de’ Vecchi was baptized in January 1543, thereby providing a more accurate date of birth of late 1542 or early 1543.
3. Rome 1985, 191.
4. Archives of San Eligio, cited in Gere and Pouncey 1983, 1:176; for the 1574 date, see also Churchill 1912, 128.
5. Bartsch 1978–, 4:232.
6. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, inv. d6. See Knorn-Ezernieks 2013, no. 43.
7. Knorn-Ezernieks 2013, 97.
8. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 2009.330. See New York and Chicago 1994, no. 81; Knorn-Ezernieks 2013, 402–3, fig. 109.