Lot 10: AURELIO LUINI

AURELIO LUINI LUINO 1530 - 1593 MILAN A SHEET OF STUDIES INCLUDING HEADS, HANDS AND FIGURES Pen and brown ink, made up at the bottom right 235 by 166 mm

Jonathan Richardson Senr. (L.2184, dry; L.2995), his attribution on the mount: Polidoro and his shelf marks, verso: L.75 / LL.56;
Dr and Mrs Francis Springell,
their sale, London, Sotheby's, 30 June 1986, lot 146, where bought by the present owner

This engaging drawing is entirely characteristic of Aurelio Luini's graphic style. Luini would often fill his whole sheet with studies, generally unrelated, organising the page in an elegant and pleasing mise en page. In the present example, the four studies of a bearded man alternate with two studies of hands (with the pronounced articulation of the knuckles which is a distinctive characteristic of Luini), a crucifix and two saints, and a drapery study. Executed with a fine use of the pen in a small space, these sheets were admired by the painter and writer Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo in his Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura, published in Milan in 1584. Lomazzo writes: ' ...in poco spazio, gran quantità di figure per forza di quell'arte, con la quale egli par esser nato, oltre la notomia, che egli fondamentalmente possiede'.υ1 Luini had a successful career over the course of forty years in Lombardy, working in and around Milan. Drawings such the present work could also originally have been sheets from sketchbooks; they are rarely connected to surviving paintings. A comparable sheet of studies is in Dresden.υ2

1. R. Ciardi, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, scritti sulle arti, Milan 1973-4, vol. I, p. 369
2. Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen; see E. Panofsky, The Codex Huygens and Leonardo da Vinci's Art Theory, London 1940, fig. 76