MASTER ARTEMIO (Verona, active circa 1491)

The drawing comes from the so-called Antonio II Badile Album, one of the earliest documented collections of drawings in Renaissance Italy. Assembled around 1500 by the Veronese painter Antonio II Badile, the volume included ninety-nine drawings by different northern Italian artists. After the album was disbound in the early 1950s, the drawings were sold individually. A large number of drawings from the album bear handwritten 16th-century inscriptions with attributions. Among the names of the artists mentioned are Andrea Mantegna and Stefano da Verona, but also more obscure ones such as ‘Maestro Artemio’. The present drawing, together with eight other sheets, is attributed to Artemio (Degenhart and Schmitt, op. cit., nos. 781-784, 792, 805, 806, pls. 4-7, 11, 15, 28, 29), a little-known painter who is documented in Verona in the summer of 1491 when he received the prestigious commission for the decoration of the Miniscalchi chapel in the important church of Sant’Anastasia. The project for the decoration was paid for but the commission was never realized, so the artist’s only known works are the nine surviving drawings from the Badile Album (Rossi, op. cit., p. 439). All of the sheets are executed in pen and ink and represent eccentric figures characterized by clumpy bodies and rustic facial feature such as the monk portrayed here. Artemio’s graphic style resembles the work of Bernardo Parentino, to whom the group was formerly attributed.