Dirck Hendrickz Centen, "The Master of The Egmont Albums" The Children of Israel in the Wilderness Pen and grey/brown ink and wash and pink watercolour / red chalk wash The 'Master of the Egmont Albums' was so named by Philip Pouncey in 1958 because much of his surviving work could be found in albums of drawings formerly in the collection of John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont. The numerous sheets contained therein, perhaps not all of which were by the same hand, had evaded identification for the best part of two centuries. The number and variety of attributions that have appeared both in print and inscribed on the drawings themselves, reveal the extent of the confusion; among others Jaques de Gheyn, Salviati, Rubens, Barocci, Hans van Aachen, Pordenone, Jan Blocklandt, Giulio Romano, Claudius Cock, Tintoretto and Giovanni della Rovere have been suggested as the author. It was not until 1990 that Nicole Dacos was able correctly to establish the identity of the artist as Dirck Hendricksz Centen, better known in Italy, where he spent much of his working life, as Teodoro d'errico. D'Errico had been a dominant figure in Naples during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, decorating the churches of San Gregorio Armeno, Santa Maria la Nova and San Domenico Maggiore in that city, as well as in outlying towns such as Saviano and Celico. He employed the attenuated Mannerist style popular in central Italy during the preceeding decades, though somewhat récherché by the 1590s, when he was at his most prolific. His drawing style in particular was exuberantly free in its elongation of the human form and the theatricality of gesture. The present example has the unusual addition of pink washes to describe the faces of the protagonists, and the style conforms to those he made towards the end of his career, such as those described by Dacos in the Rijksmuseum Het Catherijneconvent, Utrecht and private collections in London and New York. In 1606, when the artist was already in his 60s, he left Naples for his native Amsterdam in order to marry, and fathered five children in six years. |
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