Museum of Art
Artist: Jacopo Chimenti, called Jacopo da Empoli (Italian, ca. 1554-1640)
Medium: pen and brown ink with brown wash over graphite and black chalk on paper
Dimensions: 7 1/4 in. x 8 in. (18.4 cm. x 20.3 cm.)
Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
Accession Number: 1811.8.a
The traditional attribution of this sheet to Giovanni Manozzi, called da San Giovanni (1592-1636), has not been accepted by scholars.1 Though firmly rooted in Florentine baroque draughtsmanship, the drawing's authorship remains less than certain. Phihp Pouncey has most firmly proposed Jacopo da Empoli, but other suggestions have been made, including such close contemporaries as Cosimo Gamberucci (ca. 1560-1621) and Lodovico Buti (ca. 1550-1611).2
Jacopo da Empoli studied with Maso da San Friano in Florence and entered the Accademia del Disegno in 1576. He is known to have copied the works of Renaissance masters such as Fra Bartolommeo and Pontormo. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, he worked almost exclusively in Tuscany but participated in decorations for Medici festivities and the paintings for the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.
The view in the right distance of the Bowdoin drawing may be a scene in Florence, but the subject, an interment, remains unrecognized. The figure carries no attributes such as religious vestments to aid an identification. The draughtsmanship may be compared with similar composition studies by Jacopo da Empoli in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Uffizi.3 The largest group ofhis drawings, over four hundred sheets, is in the Uffizi."4
1. A Manozzi sheet of a very similar subject in as quite different style is at Oxford (Parker 1956, no. 897, vol. 2, repr. pl. 194).
2. Pouncey first stated his attribution in correspondence with Walker Vitzthum in 1962 and verbally reaffirmed his opinion to the author. The latter two suggestions are from David Scrase and Nicholas Turner, respectively.
3. Thiem 1977, cat. nos. 15, 17; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Jacopo da Empoli (exh. cat. y Anna Forlani) (Florence, 1962), fig. I.
4. Thiem 1977, p. 272.
Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).