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| VENETIAN SCHOOL, circa 1500-1510
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| A Man in a Turban
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Sold to a Private Collector, 2006
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Brush and brown ink
205 x 155 mm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Switzerland
EXHIBITIONS
Venice, Palazzo Ducale, Giorgione e i Giorgioneschi, 1955, p. 292, no. 8, as attributed to Giorgione or his circle and with the correct location (catalogue by P. Zampetti)
LITERATURE
A. Venturi, “Giorgione,” Vita artistica, II, 1927, p. 127, fig. 1 (as Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
A. Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, Milan, 1928, vol. IX, part III, pp. 24-5, fig. 9 (as Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
A. Morassi, Giorgione, Milan, 1942, p. 123, fig. 138 (as Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
H. Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters of the 15th and 16th Centuries, New York, 1944, p. 175, no. A 715 (as not by Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
G. Fiocco, Giorgione, Bergamo, 1948, p. 50, no. 146a, ill. (as Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
L. Coletti, Tutta la pittura di Giorgione, Milan, 1955, p. 63, pl. 93b (as Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
T. Pignatti, Giorgione, Verona, 1955, p. 136 (as Venetian School, early 16th century, and as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris?)
G. Fiocco, “Il mio Giorgione,” Rivista di Venezia, 1955, no. 1, p. 16 (as Giorgione, with correct location)
P. Zampetti, L’opera completa di Giorgione, Milan, 1968, p. 102, ill (as closely connected with Giorgione, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
T. Pignatti, Giorgione, Venice, 1969, no. V 27 (as close to Lotto, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
T. Pignatti, Giorgione, Milan, 1978, no. V 28, (as close to Lotto, and erroneously as preserved in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
contd…
This enigmatic portrait of a man in a turban from the opening years of the sixteenth century has not been seen in public for over fifty years. Although originally believed to be by Perugino, Adolfo Venturi attributed it to Giorgione in 1927, connecting it tentatively with one of his iconic paintings, the Three Philosophers in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Since then, the drawing has been discussed in numerous publications on the artist up to recent years. It may have gained additional mystery due to an error committed by Venturi and followed by most, but not all, subsequent commentators. He believed the drawing belonged to the collection of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and this location has been reported in the literature until the late 1970s. This error is somewhat surprising, as the drawing was included in the ground-breaking exhibition on Giorgione and his circle, held in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, in 1955, where it is reproduced in the catalogue with the correct location, a private collection in Switzerland, where the drawing has remained until recently.
The drawing shows a man in a turban, looking down as though contemplating, and revealing an enigmatic stillness, characteristic of Orientals as they appear in the work of Giorgione and Giovanni Bellini. The drawing is executed with the tip of the brush on off-white paper. Though Venturi’s attribution to Giorgione was accepted by Morassi, Fiocco, and Coletti, it was rejected by the Tietzes in their seminal study of Venetian Drawings of the sixteenth century. It was subsequently exhibited in Venice as by Giorgione or an artist from his circle, and this seems still the most convincing solution. More recently, Pignatti considered the sheet close to Lotto, in which case it would be a very early work by that master; however, the few drawings that are generally accepted as early Lottos are quite different in technique and style, and do not reveal the strong influence of Giovanni Bellini as does our sheet. In fact, in type and style, the head of our figure, possibly destined for a painting of the Virgin flanked by two saints, is close to Bellini’s tempera panel of the Lamentation of Christ, of circa 1500, in the Uffizi, Florence.
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