Currently not on view
Horse Looking to Right, with Cornucopia and Shield,
ca. 1500
School of Andrea Mantegna, Italian, 1431–1506
x1944-271
The juxtaposition on this sheet of the elegant horse, the flaming cornucopia, and the fragment of a shield raises the possibility that these motifs were copied from a model-book. Model-books were widely circulated repertoires of stock patterns used by Medieval and early Renaissance Italian artists as sources of pictorial designs to be studied and copied. Although the artist for this sheet is unknown, the brush technique and relief-like effects strongly suggest the influence of Andrea Mantegna. An almost identical horse appears in the adjoining small panel painting by the late-fifteenth-century Veronese artist Niccolò Giolfino. This work depicts an episode from the life of the virtuous noblewoman Chiomara, as narrated by Roman historians such as Plutarch, Livy, and Valerius Maximus. As in the roughly contemporary drawing, Giolfino’s horse may well have derived from a similar model-book prototype.
Information
Title
Horse Looking to Right, with Cornucopia and Shield
Dates
ca. 1500
Maker
School of Andrea Mantegna
Medium
Brush and brown ink and wash, heightened with white gouache, on prepared gray-green paper
Dimensions
17.6 × 11.9 cm (6 15/16 × 4 11/16 in.)
frame: 53.2 × 40.3 × 2.9 cm (20 15/16 × 15 7/8 × 1 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
Object Number
x1944-271
Place Made
Europe, Florence
Inscription
Inscribed verso of mount, center, in brown ink:
Andrea Mante[g]na;
Reference Numbers
Gibbons 710
Culture
Type
Materials
Subject
From album owned by Thomas
Barker of Bath (1769–1847); Walter Savage Landor
(1775–1864); given to Kate Field (1836–1896);1
bequeathed to Stephen Van Cullen White (1831–
1913); purchased by Frank Jewett Mather Jr., stamp
(l. 1853a) recto, lower left, in black.;
From Scholz, “Italian Drawings...”: [dated] Tuscan school, late XV century. (See reference Bib. 4382);
- Exhibition of drawings by old masters from the private collection of Prof. Frank Jewett Mather: International Art Center of Roerich Museum: December 18th to 31st, 1930, (New York: Roerich Museum, 1930)., no. 10
- Fourth anniversary exhibition drawings: 2 March through 15 April, 1936, (New London, CT: Allyn Museum, 1936).
- "[Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. 1868-1953: In memoriam]", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 13, no. 1 (1954): p. 2-19., p. 6 (illus.)
- Animal drawings from the XV to XX centuries: [exhibition] December 1962, (New York: Helene C. Seiferheld Gallery, 1962)., no. 8 (illus.)
- Winslow Ames, Drawings of the masters: Italian drawings from the 15th to the 18th century...., (London: Shorewood Publishers, 1963)., pl. 28 (in color)
- Janos Scholz, "Italian Drawings in the Art Museum of Princeton University," Burlington Magazine 109 no. 770 (May, 1967): p. 290-299., p. 294, figs. 28, 29
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
- Barbara T. Ross, "The Prints and Drawings Collection: The Early Years," in "An Art Museum for Princeton: The Early Years", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 55, no. 1/2 (1996): 135–155., p. 141, fig. 7
- Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 25, fig. 9.1
