Currently not on view
The Way to Calvary,
ca. 1570
Luca Cambiaso, 1527–1585; born Genoa, Italy; died Madrid, Spain
x1948-622
In this close-up treatment of Jesus on the road to Calvary, Cambiaso privileges human drama over a natural setting, capturing physical gestures and facial expressions with economic lines and dramatic washes. The kneeling gentleman on the left is probably a patron, occupying the place of Simon of Cirene who helped Jesus carry his cross. It was common at the time for patrons to have their portraits inserted into the sacred narrative, thereby professing and commemorating their devotion. The drawing must have been a preparatory study for a lost project by Cambiaso, who was one of the leading painters in late sixteenth-century Italy.
Information
Title
The Way to Calvary
Dates
ca. 1570
Maker
Medium
Pen, brown ink and brown wash
Dimensions
24.9 x 18.4 cm (9 13/16 x 7 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895
Object Number
x1948-622
Culture
Type
Materials
Kaye Dowland in 1872 (nineteenth-century inscription on verso repeated in Platt's hand); Miss Hill [Lugt 1313c] lower right; Dan Fellows Platt [Lugt 750a, lower left verso, Lugt 2066b lower left recto on mount], bought in 1924
- Bertina Suida Manning and William Suida, Luca Cambiaso, la vita e le opere, (Milano: Ceschina, 1957)., pp. 92, 192
- Drawings of Luca Cambiaso, Moneglia, Italy, 1527-1585 El Escorial, Spain: a loan exhibition, Nov. 22, 1967-Jan. 21, 1968, Finch College Museum of Art, (New York: Finch College Museum of Art, 1967)., no. 3
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
- Dante Bernini and Caterina Bon Valsassina, Luca Cambiaso e la sua cerchia: disegni inediti da un album palermitano del '700: catalogo della mostra, Genova, Galleria nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, 7 dicembre, 1985-2 marzo, 1986, (Genova: SAGEP, 1985)., mentioned p. 36, under cat. no. 24, 25, 26, 27
-
Anna Forlani Tempesti. "Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth- Century Drawings." Vol. 5 of The Robert Lehman Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991).
, p. 138, no. 15
