Pen and brown ink and wash, over faint traces of black chalk, squared in black chalk. Arched top. Laid down onto an old backing with framing lines and the number: 27 in brown ink and the inscription: Allegri da Correggio. Old inscription on the verso (visible when held to the light): Lelio da Novellara/ 26.
222 x 109 mm. (8 ¾ x 4 ⅓ in.)
Sold to a Private Collection.
PROVENANCE: The Swedish Consul Dr. Johan Jacob Ekmans (bears his printed label: No …/ Tillhört Med. Doktor Johan Jacob Ekmans samlingar.), Wäija, Västernorrland, Sweden, died 1949; thence by descent.
Lelio Orsi belongs to the circle of highly sophisticated 16th Century artists heralding from the area around Bologna, who had, at their core, the influence of the Parmese master, Correggio. These included Primaticcio, native of Bologna and pupil of Giulio Romano, Nicolo dell’Abate, born in Modena and trained in Bologna and Parmigianino, who worked in his own city, Parma and in Rome, Florence and Bologna. Orsi was born and died in Novellara, which lies between Bologna and Parma, slightly north of Modena. Though he certainly spent time in Venice (documented there in 1553) and in Rome, most probably a few months in 1546-7 and again between 1554 and 15561, his travels and perhaps even his career, were apparently limited, possibly the result of his entanglement in the murder of Comte Gian Paolo Bojardo, and the resulting banishment from Reggio Emilia, which took place in 1546. Whilst Primaticcio, Nicolo dell’Abate and Parmigianino built up reputations in Italy and abroad, particularly of course, in France, Orsi remained in his home town, having the protection of Costanza di Correggio, Contessa di Novellara and working principally on secular decorations for the façades and interiors of palaces. By its nature fragile, much of his fresco work survives only as fragments, therefore as a painter, his style is mostly defined by a number of relatively small scale oils, whereas his work as a draughtsman is represented by a considerable body of drawings surviving principally in museum collections, most extensively in the Louvre, the British Museum, the Royal Collection at Windsor, the Uffizi and at Modena. His subject matter was often literary, inspired by Ovid and some of the more obscure classical writers. He appears to have frequented Humanist circles and, particularly in the last part of his long career, his religious works have an esoteric and mystic character. Few of his paintings and drawings can be securely dated with documentary evidence and therefore his work is generally classified according to stylistic changes and the emergence of the influence of specific artists. Correggio remained the greatest inspiration, almost consistently throughout his career; the influence of Giulio Romano is also clearly detectable both in Orsi’s figure types and in his decorative constructions. From the early 1550s, the overwhelming effect of Michelangelo is clearly felt along with and, as has been suggested by Vittoria Romani, the slightly earlier signs, in the 1540s, of Orsi’s attention being focused on Perino del Vaga1. Parmigianino’s delicacy and his fine pen and ink technique must also have been known to Orsi and links have further been made with Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), to whom Orsi has been compared as an artist working in a similarly individual, slightly eccentric and geographically isolated manner2. A further connection can be seen with the work of Northern artists such as Marten van Heemskerck, whose engravings Orsi clearly knew as well as those of Albrecht Durer.
Drawn with an extreme refinement, this sensuous and rare representation of Aegina3 is full of the spirit of Correggio, in its delightful, rounded forms, soft luminosity and even the facial type. Previously unrecorded other than as having belonged to the Swedish collector Dr. Ekmans, this drawing was thought to depict Leda and the Swan, a theme which Orsi painted at least once (Fig.1)4 but the curious representation of Jupiter, certainly more eagle than swan, suggests that the subject of the drawing is a rarer one: the ravishment of Aegina, daughter of the River God Asopus. The manner in which Aegina is posed balancing on a classical stool in the narrow space of the niche, is intriguing and seems typical of Orsi’s originality but, as with the Leda mentioned above, the composition may be based on an as yet unidentified source; the figures of Leda herself and the Swan in the painting, derive precisely from a Hellenistic relief, widely known through Roman copies and from engravings and drawings thereafter5 (Fig.2).
Stylistically, the drawing belongs with the work given to the late 1540s, a period considered as being particularly productive. Correggio’s influence is clearly paramount and the drawing lacks any of the intense Michelangelism of later work. Orsi’s preference at this time was also for using pen and brush and ink and wash, sometimes with white heightening; later on, especially in the period after his journey to Rome, he seems to have concentrated on using pen and ink alone, in a scratchy and almost engraver like manner which shows considerable connection to the work of Heemskerck and other Northern artists such as Lucas de Leyden. In discussing the work of the late 1540s, Vittoria Romani describes Orsi’s frescoes in Novellara, noting in particular a fragment from a ceiling decoration showing the Rape of Ganymede6(see Fig.3), an octagonal composition long considered to be the work of Correggio himself, in which she also sees the clear influence of Giulio Romano and the Palazzo del Te frescoes as well as the appearance of a strong link between Orsi and the work of Primaticcio (which would, by this time, have become well known through the dispersal of engravings after his decorations at Fontainebleau). Beyond the link in subject matter, the aesthetic sensibility in the present work is clearly echoed in the Rape of Ganymede, and is both more serious and more sensuous than that present in another of Orsi’s depictions of ravishment by a bird, a study for frieze decoration now in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Besançon which includes a motif described as Leda and the Swan though the bird is clearly a cockerel and the figure may well be male7. (Fig.4) Representations of Aegina and Jupiter in classical and later art are surprisingly elusive; therefore one further drawing given to Orsi is of note, a study for a freize showing a male figure with an eagle, a nymph and a river spirit, possibly representing Jupiter, Aegina and her father the river god8. The purpose of the present work could indeed also be decorative, a trompe l’oeil niche perhaps part of a series around an interior. Some similarities in style are evident with the group of frescoes surviving in Novellara from the so-called Casino di Sopra9 although, these with their statuesque figures and strong echoes of Michelangelo must surely date from some years later, after the Roman sojourn. Another strong possibility is that the drawing was done for its own sake, perhaps inspired by Caraglio’s series of engravings executed in around 1527, illustrating the Loves of the Gods, after drawings by Perino del Vaga and Rosso Fiorentino and of course redolent of Correggio’s own series of four paintings from the early 1530s illustrating the Loves of Jupiter, which were given to the Emperor, Charles V. Neither of these series illustrates Jupiter with Aegina.
1. Vittoria Romana, Lelio Orsi, Modena 1984, documents cited p.6 and text p.37.
2. See Diane de Grazia, Correggio e il suo lascito, exhibition catalogue, Parma, 1984, p.266 and V. Romano, op. cit., p.37.
3. Taken to an island called Oenone, Aegina asked Jupiter to be renamed it and there bore him an immortal son Aeacus who became king of the island. A subject only rarely represented, although there is a depiction by Greuze in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no. 1970.295)
4. See V. Romano, fig.23, p.38.
5. See Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford 1986, nos. 3 and 3 and p.53.
6. See V. Romano, op.cit., fig.24 and p.39 and see also Exhibition Catalogue, Lelio Orsi, Reggio Emilia 1987-88, cat.36 and colour plate.
7. See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1987-8, cat. 30.
8. See sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 21 January 2004, lot 8.
9. Exhibition catalogue, as above, cats. 72- 93.
Also comparable:
Cat. 30 – Donna che cuce – A Woman Sewing in the Albertina Vienna
Also has a very old inscription: Lelio da Nivolara and a similarly luminous quality. BUT is not in Vittoria Romana’s catalogue, and perhaps is by another hand. Iinv 2728) The 1950 catalogue suggests that it dates to the period of renewed Correggism, with memories thrown in of Primiaticcio – belongs with the last known works of the artist – and is comparable to the Madonna della Ghiara (cat.29) from the Tempio della B.V della Ghiara, Reggio Emilia, which bears an almost contemporary inscription dating it to 1569.
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