FJK 086
Muziano Giovanni Girolamo (Italian, Acquafredda, Brescia 1528–1592 Rome)
Mountain Landscape with a Watermill
Date unknown
12 19/32 × 8 17/64 in. (320 × 210 mm)
Medium
Charcoal, pen, brown ink and brown wash on watermark paper: Trois fleurs (Three flowers)
Collector’s mark “W. Esdaile” bottom left (Lugt 2617) and verso (Lugt 816)
W. Esdaile’s handwritten inscription bottom left: 1836.300
Inscription in pencil: attribué à Titien / 1489-1576 / Cadre Renaissance / S. 62
Origin
William Esdaile Collection (1758-1837), London
Posthumous sale, June 18, 1840, part of no. 190 (with nos. 189 & 191, £ 2.6s to Lee)
Foundation P. and N. de Boer, Amsterdam
Sale, Christie’s, London, July 4, 1995, no. 12
Private Collection
Sale, Christie’s, New York, January 22, 2004, no. 10
Jan Krugier Collection, Monaco, JK 6205
Jan Krugier Foundation
Exhibitions
Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen, Verzameling P. et N. de Boer, 1966, no. 159.
Notes
The attribution was kindly confirmed by Taco Dibbits who will include the drawing in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Muziano’s drawings. Two other landscapes by Muziano, which appear to be from the same series since they share the same format, technique and watermark, are in the Uffizi (N. Dacos, Fiamminghi a Roma, artistes des Pays-Bas et de la principauté de Liège à Rome à la Renaissance, exhib. cat., Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1995, nos. 141-2).
The present drawing is strikingly similar, although not directly related, to the series of landscapes with hermits and penitent saints engraved by Cornelis Cort after Muziano’s drawings and published cum privilegio Pope Gregory XIII in 1573-5 (Holl. 107-111, 116-117, 121 and 123). Muziano’s landscapes spring from the Venetian tradition tempered by the Northern influence of his master Lambert Sustris. However, as Karel van Mander reported, his landscapes have a “powerful, strong, fantastic manner different from those of the Northerners, something rarely seen among the Italians” (K. van Mander, Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 192v, quoted in N. Dacos, op. cit., p. 262).
Christie’s, Old Master and 19th Century Drawings, New York January 2004
Request for information/loan
The Jan Krugier Foundation is devoted to increasing the impact of the collection of drawings through regular loans to major exhibitions. Loan applications should include a complete presentation of the project.