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Giulio Clovio (1498-1578)

A Classical Profile c. 1540

Grey chalk | 28.0 x 19.7 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 990453

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  • A drawing of a classical head and bust, with elaborate armour, in profile. It is not obvious whether the subject is male or female. The drawing was inventoried in the eighteenth century (see Provenance) as from the school of Michelangelo and a depiction of Alexander the Great. Popham (in P&W) catalogued the drawing as by Giulio Clovio and as a head of Minerva, noting that the head recurs in a very similar form in a fictive medallion on the first page of The Commentaries on St Paul, in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. That manuscript was commissioned by Cardinal Marino Grimani (1488-1546) and is datable to the mid-1530s. Several other miniatures by Clovio also exist in drawn versions that seem to have been as independent works, and this is probably the case here. Bruno Fasoli (correspondence, 2023) has noted the close similarity to a head of Alexander engraved by Tobias Stimmer in a 1575 edition of Paolo Giovio's Elogia.

    It is probable that, in producing this drawing, Clovio was inspired by antique cameos; Giorgio Vasari recounts that Clovio drew copies of antiquities as well as Renaissance miniatures, paintings and sculptures. The overall appearance of the head is remarkably Neoclassical, and it it not surprising that the drawing was copied in an etching by George III’s eldest daughter, Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Princess Royal, in 1785 (RCIN 816795).

    The sheet of paper was damaged and skilfully restored at an early date, along the right margin and outside the goddess’s profile.

    See P. Joannides, Michelangelo and his influence. Drawings from Windsor Castle, London 1996, no. 5; A. Gnann, Michelangelo als Zeichner, Albertina 2010, no. 112.
    Provenance

    Listed in George III's 'Inventory A,' c.1800-20, p. 43, 'Mich: Angelo Buonarroti. / Tom. I.' (c. 1802): '4….of Alexander….Ditto. [Black Chalk]'

  • Medium and techniques

    Grey chalk

    Measurements

    28.0 x 19.7 cm (sheet of paper)

  • Other number(s)
    Bibliographic reference(s)

    P. Joannides, Michelangelo and his influence. Drawings from Windsor Castle, London 1996 5


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