15/10/24 – Acquisition – Paris, Louvre Museum – Here is a large sheet that the curators of the Graphic Arts department of the Louvre have been waiting for over thirty years: published for the first time in the Bulletin of the Society for the History of French Art in 1989, where it was the subject of two communications and two articles by Sylvie Béguin and Catherine Grodecki, this life-size study with a more administrative than artistic status (ill. 1) was able to be purchased after the exhibition on the treasure of Notre-Dame de Paris last winter (see the article). In fact, this drawing, firmly attributed to Rosso Fiorentino, was admired among the remains of objects ordered for the cathedral under the Ancien Régime, few of which have unfortunately survived.
- 1. Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540)
Project for the cantorial staff of Notre-Dame de Paris1538
Pen and brown ink, black chalk, brown wash and yellow wash – 52 x 29.6 cm
Paris, Louvre Museum
Photo: Raphaël Chipault
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See the image on his page
Different and complementary, the articles written in 1989 by these two eminent specialists have not aged and laid the foundations of what we know about this sheet with contractual purposes as explained in the inscription which is unfortunately not the signature of the artist as one could have dreamed! Let’s transcribe this: “ In the year one thousand five hundred and thirty seven, on Monday the eighteenth day of February, this present letter was signed by the notaries subscribed following a certain deal made by Macé Begault, a goldsmith in Paris, to Gentlemen of the Paris Chapter […] “. Macé Bégault, the master goldsmith who executed the object, is known from the archives which also attest that the painter Rosso Fiorentino, named canon of Notre-Dame on September 26, 1537, was responsible for controlling the creation of the stick which was completed on April 15 1538. A good body of clues and stylistic arguments plead in favor of attributing this drawing to Rosso. He was then…
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