Live Auction 18953Italian Drawings From The Robert Landolt Collection
Attributed to Polidoro Caldara, called Polidoro da Caravaggio (Caravaggio 1499-1543 Messina)
Lot 15

Attributed to Polidoro Caldara, called Polidoro da Caravaggio (Caravaggio 1499-1543 Messina)

Studies for a Deposition and Lamentation

Closed8 December 2020

Price Realised

GBP 10,000

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Attributed to Polidoro Caldara, called Polidoro da Caravaggio (Caravaggio 1499-1543 Messina)
Studies for a Deposition and Lamentation
pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white, watermark arrow above a circle, an anchor to the right
7 3/8 x 5 1/8 in. (18.8 x 13 cm)

Dr Franz Pokorny, Vienna (fl. mid-19th Century) (according to an inscription on the verso).
Josef V. Novák (1842-1918), Vienna (according to the Landolt typescript catalogue).
with Gustav Nebehay, Berlin.
W.R. Jeudwine, London (exhib. cat., Exhibition of Old Master Drawings presented by Wynne R. Jeudwine, London, Alpine Club, 1960, no. 72, as Biagio Pupini).
with Hans Calmann, London, 1963, from whom acquired by Robert Landolt.

Specialist note


This rapidly sketched drawing has been tentatively attributed to Polidoro da Caravaggio (see Matile, op. cit.). On the page are assembled different studies for figures related to a Deposition and a Lamentation which are spontaneously drawn in pen and ink and then heightened with white. Polidoro employed the same media in many of his drawings, yet this sheet is executed with unique fluidity. The mourning atmosphere in the drawing recalls a more finished composition by the artist, The Entombment, in the Louvre (inv. 592; see P. Leone de Castris, Polidoro da Caravaggio. L'opera completa, Naples, 2001, no. 198, ill.). An alternative attribution to Biagio Pupini dalle Lame (Bologna 1511-1575) has been suggested by Hans Calmann, and Julien Stock proposed an attribution to Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) (according to Robert Landolt’s typescript catalogue).