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| Domenico Campagnola ( 1500 - 1564)
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| God the Father Handing the Ten Commandments to Moses
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Pen in brown ink, traces of squaring in black chalk
Numbered upper right, 15
232 x 408 mm
PROVENANCE
Holtkott collection, Bedburg
Herbert List, Munich, his mark (not in Lugt)
Stiftung Wolfgang Ratjen, Vaduz
LITERATURE
A. S. Poniz, “Le stampe di Domenico Campagnola,” in Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, vol. CXXXVIII, 1979-80, pp. 303-04, note 4.
EXHIBITIONS
M. Winner in Stiftung Ratjen. Italienische Zeichnungen des 16.–18. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1977, p. 28, no. 9, ill.
This drawing illustrates the climax of the story of Moses, the most prominent figure in the Old Testament. Having climbed Mount Sinai, he heard the voice of the Holy Spirit through angelic trumpets but was unable to see God the Father who, supported by angels, remained invisible behind the clouds. After forty days and nights, “when the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God“ (Exodus 31:18). In our drawing (Fig. 1), the dramatic episode is shown in a rather archaic fashion, with the two protagonists placed horizontally and close to the beholder, while the mountaintop is only suggested with some pen strokes. The moment of handing the tablets to Moses is illuminated by the divine light emanating from God the Father surrounded by angels on clouds.
The fine execution of this sheet and its stylistic features fit well in the early work of Domenico Campagnola around 1517-20. The dense parallel strokes and cross- hatching, as well as the chiaroscuro effects are typical of his contemporary figure drawings and prints. While the style and pen work of this drawing, as can be seen in other relatively early works, owe much to Titian’s achievements, its composition is rather remarkable and likely Campagnola’s own invention.
The subject of Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law appears frequently in medieval art, often as part of a cycle illustrating Moses’s life. While rather infrequent in 15th and 16th Italy the subject was occasionally included in monumental Old Testament cycles. Usually the present scene was relegated to the background landscape, with the Israelites and their encampment at the foot of Mount Sinai shown in the foreground. As one of the most prominent such representations one may cite one of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze reliefs of the Porta del Paradiso (1426-1452) at Florence Baptistery where Moses is shown standing below the clouds with God the Father supported by angels with trumpets. In Northern Italy Bartolomeo Bellano created a more dynamic rendering of the subject in his representation of the Worship of the Golden Calf, which is part of a cycle of ten bronze reliefs made for the rood screen of S. Antonio, Padua (1484-88/90, Fig. 2).
Around the same time, the composition with the kneeling Moses receiving the tablets – the sole moment depicted in our drawing – appears in Cosimo Rosselli’s monumental wall painting in the Sistine chapel (1481-82), and again around 1517-19 in one of the frescoes known as Raphael’s Bible in the Loggie of the Vatican. Both these examples show the crucial encounter of God the Father and Moses in a landscape with figures. They mark important developments in depicting this subject but they differ in composition from the present drawing.
The most likely source of inspiration for Campagnola may be found in Venice. More specifically, it may be the small relief of God giving the Tablets to Moses, which formed part of the carved Justice capital with figural scenes below the large relief of the Judgement of Solomon, prominently located on the north-west corner of the Palazzo Ducale, towards the Porta della Carta (Fig. 3). While the Judgement was probably made by Bartolomeo Buon in the 1430s, the Justice capital below has been attributed to the Florentine sculptor Pietro di Niccolò Lamberti, datable to the years 1425-29. The scene between the foliage and a small tree has a simple arrangement: God the Father emerges from the clouds towards Moses who is kneeling on the ground. Both are connected with each other through the tablets.
Campagnola’s composition reveals a similar simplicity, but at the same time the artist transformed the medieval formula into a “modern” depiction. The figures, the draperies and movements are more natural and dynamic. Moses’ appearance is close to the Renaissance type of an old apostle and details such as the lively group of putti may well derive from Titian’s Assunta (1516-18) in Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice.
Given its considerable size and thorough execution, Campagnola’s Moses was most likely made before 1520 either as a finished work in its own right or as a study for a print. Later in life, as a leading painter in Padua, Campagnola returned twice to this rather rare subject. He depicted it in a background lunette of his painting Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee of the early 1550s (Fig. 4). And in a little known drawing of the same period he rendered the subject by focusing solely on Moses who is shown in the dramatic moment of receiving the tablets, yet without his horns and without the Lord (Fig. 5). The present sheet is a fine example of Domenico’s early skills as a draughtsman and one of the outstanding figural drawings of the period of 1517-18.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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