Drawing of the month #5
Benedetto Caliari (1538 – 1598)
Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna
Pen in brown and brush in brown and white on blue paper, 342 × 259 mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Inv. no.: RP-T-1953-323(R,V)
The drawing is featured in Alexa’s essay, ‘Legacies on blue paper: Drawing in the Bassano, Caliari, and Tintoretto Family Workshops,’ in Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers, edited by Maria Aresin and Thomas Dalla Costa, available now.
Dr Alexa McCarthy, Executive Director of the Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation, has kindly chosen our fifth drawing of the month.
Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna is one of two preparatory drawings by Benedetto Caliari (1538–1598) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. The drawings are from the Album Borghese, according to inscriptions on old mounts, and the owner has been tentatively identified as Venetian collector Zaccaria Sagredo (1653–1729). The present drawing depicts the story of Roman citizen Mucius Scaevola burning his hand before Etruscan ruler Porsenna to prove his valour, having been condemned to death for attempting to murder Porsenna. Porsenna was so taken with Scaevola’s bravery that he set him free. Scaevola was granted fertile land along the Tiber, forming the origin story of Rome’s important Scaevola family.
Mucius Scaevola demonstrates the symbiosis between drawings on blue paper and painted colorito in the Caliari workshop. Benedetto’s compositions reflect the style of his brother, Paolo Veronese’s (1528–1588), who from the early 1550s onwards, executed independent ‘chiaroscuri,’ utilizing either blue paper, or, more commonly, white sheets with a blue preparation. Here using blue paper, Benedetto explores the impact of light and shade on colour. On the recto of the sheet is a chiaroscuro drawing conveying the tonal effects of light and shade through ink and wash. On the verso, traced pen-and-ink outlines of the composition on the recto serve to block out colours which are labelled in the artist’s hand. Making use of both sides of the same sheet, Benedetto detailed the interplay of light and shadow, as well as the use of specific colours and their respective hues. The colours of white, red, beretino or an ashy grey, yellow (zallo), and blue (azzurro), are written throughout the composition. The shorthand and cross-outs suggest that this could be a preparatory drawing for a project that either no longer survives or was not realized.
The project for which Benedetto’s drawing was executed is uncertain, though Carlo Ridolfi mentions frescos in the Palazzo Mocenigo, including a scene of Mucius Scaevola, in which the colours imitated the marble. Paolo Veronese also created an interplay of textures with fictive sculptures and cameo reliefs in his fresco works, both within and on the exterior of palazzi in the Veneto. The drawing and painting techniques employed by Paolo Veronese impacted Benedetto’s stylistic development. Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna demonstrates the centrality of line, light, shade, and colour in Benedetto’s process of disegno, which was facilitated by the use of blue paper.
