Description:

inscribed centre top by Antonio II Badile: de mo. Artemio
pen and brown ink
165 x 160 mm

Provenance:

Antonio II Badile (1424/25- 1507/12), Verona, by descent to
Antonio III Badile (1518-1560), Verona
Count Ludovico Moscardo (1611-1681), Verona, by descent to
Moscardo Miniscalchi Collection, Verona, by descent to
Count Mario Miniscalchi-Erizzo (1881-1957), Verona
with Francis Matthiesen, London
Francis Matthiesen, his sale Sotheby’s, London, 21 October 1963, lot 81
with Schaeffer Galleries, New York
Cornelia Bessie, New York

Literature

Old Master Drawings, 1963, no. 42, pl. XIX, as Bernardo Parentino
Karet, E., Windows, P., ‘The Antonio II Badile Album of Drawings: a Reconstruction of an Early Sixteenth Century Collection’, Arte Lombarda, new series, CXLV, 2005, no. 3, pp. 26, 33, fig. 18
Degenhart, B., Schmitt, A., Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300-1450. Teil III. Verona, III, Badile-Album. Studiensammlung einer Veroneser Künstlerwerkstatt, Munich, 2010, p. 42, ill., p. 76, n. 16, under no. 784, no. 787, pl. 10, p. 106, under no. 792, 110, under no. 793, p. 178, under no. 811
Rossi, F., ‘Maestro Artemio: un eccentrico pittore mantegnesco a Verona’, in Andrea Mantegna. Impronta del genio. Convegno internazionale di studi. Padova, Verona, Mantova. 8, 9, 10, Novembre 2006, Florence, 2010, p. 451, fig. 14
Karet, E., The Antonio II Badile Album of Drawings: The Origins of Collecting Drawings in Early Modern Northern Italy, Farnham and Burlington, 2014, p. 77, fig. 3.9, ill. and pp. 200, 236-237
Windows, P., ‘The Attributional Inscriptions in the Antonio II Badile Album of Drawings’, Master Drawings, LVI, 2018, no. 7, p. 455

Note:

This 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.  The album was broken up in the early 1950s and the drawings were sold individually.  A large number 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, 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.  All of the sheets are executed in pen and ink and represent eccentric figures such as the monk portrayed here.  Two can be found in the collections of the Fondation Custodia and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung.

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