| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Virgin and Child |
| Materials and techniques | Black chalk on grey paper, heightened with white |
| Brief description | Titian; Virgin and Child, who stands naked in his mother's lap; Black chalk on grey paper, heightened with white; Venetian School; 15th century. |
| Physical description | Virgin and Child, who stands naked in his mother's lap, with his face turned to hers; Black chalk on grey paper, heightened with white. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 11.8in
- Width: 9.2in
Top corners cut off.
Original measurements converted from fractional inches into decimal inches (rounded to one decimal place).
Dimensions taken from: DYCE COLLECTION. A Catalogue of the Paintings, Miniatures, Drawings, Engravings, Rings and Miscellaneous Objects Bequeathed by The Reverend Alexander Dyce. London : South Kensington Museum, 1874. |
| Style | |
| Credit line | Bequeathed by Rev. Alexander Dyce |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Bibliographic references | - DYCE COLLECTION. A Catalogue of the Paintings, Miniatures, Drawings, Engravings, Rings and Miscellaneous Objects Bequeathed by The Reverend Alexander Dyce. London : South Kensington Museum, 1874.
- Ward-Jackson, Peter, Italian Drawings Volume I. 14th-16th century, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1979, p. 162.
The text is as follows:
after
TITIAN
Tiziano Veccellio (?1477-1576)
345
Seated Virgin, with the Infant Christ standing on her knee
Inscribed on the back of the mount in the elder Richardson’s hand: ‘R. 47. K. 73. Th. 51. EE 47.2’; also in a different hand: ‘E collectione Dni Domini Johis. Sommers. Price’; again in a different hand: ‘the 6th night lot 15’; and again in Arthur Pond’s hand in pencil: ‘True. A Pond,’ as in Lugt 2038. Also inscribed with J. Bernard’s initials as in Lugt 1420, with the dimensions and the number ‘424’
Black chalk heightened with white on blue paper; the upper corners cut away
11 7/8 x 9 3/8 (301 x 239) Dyce 230
PROVENANCE Padre Resta (see below); Lord Somers (no. K.63 as in Lugt 2981); J. Richardson, Sr (Lugt 2183); A. Pond (Lugt 2038 on the back); J. Bernard (Lugt 1419 on the mount and Lugt 1420 on the back); Dyce Bequest 1869
LITERATURE Dyce Catalogue no. 230 (as by Titian); Reitlinger, p. 12, no. 19 (as by Titian); Bornius, p. 224; H. Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, ‘On several drawings erroneously attributed to Titain’ in Gazette des Beaux Arts, 6th series, 22, 1942, pp. 118-19 and fig. 6; Tietze and Tietze-Conrat, no. 1934
The name Tiziano is written against the number K.63 in the Rest MS catalogue in the British Museum (described in Popham, Resta; Lugt 2981; and Lugt, Supplement, p. 419). This old attribution is rejected by Tietze and Tietze-Conrat, on the grounds that the drawing is too weak. It is hard to disagree. The weakness becomes manifest if a comparison is made with a drawing in van Dyck’s Italian Sketch Book in the British Museum, which, as the Tietzes were the first to point out, is copied from a picture or drawing of the same subject (p. 16 verso, reproduced in Anton van Dyck. Italienisches Skizzenbuch, Vienna, 1965). Van Dyck’s drawing clarifies certain passages which are insdistinct or mismanaged in the Dyce drawing, notably the hands and feet. That puzzling tubular-looking object which hangs from the Virgin’s right wrist in our drawing is shown in the van Dyck drawing to be the outer side of a cloack which hangs over her shoulders and catches the light as it fall down. Th shape in the Dyce drawing is so little like a fold in a cloak that it suggests a misunderstanding on the part of the copyist. The lack of shading in the dark hollow of the cloak below the Virgin’s wrist is another defect, and so is the scamped hand. In fact the drawing is probably a copy, taken from the same picture or drawing as van Dyck’s sketch. The original may have been by Titian, os whose designs there are many copies in the van Dyck Sketch-book. The Tietzes’ suggestion that the Dyce drawing is by Sebastiano del Piombo is not convincing.
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