Stefano Dall'Azere The Baptism of Christ and Salome presenting the Head of the Baptist to Herodias: Design for the Decoration of an Apse Pen and brown ink, laid down This sheet belongs to a group of finished pen-and-ink drawings formerly attributed to various Venetian artists from the circle of Giorgione and Titian, but recently given to the Paduan painter, Stefano Dall'Arzere, a pupil of Domenico Campagnola. This group includes sheets from the Uffizi, the British Museum, Chatsworth, the National Gallery, Washington, and the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, among others. All these drawings share the same technique of dense, parallel cross-hatching in pen and brown ink, without the use of wash, employing the white of the paper as the source of light. Hatching of different density is applied to define the volume of the forms and the shadows, achieving something of the quality of a carved relief. The strong chiaroscuro effects clearly reflect the draughtsman's knowledge of the works of Giorgione. Due to their high quality, these drawings have always stood at the centre of discussions on the drawings by Giorgione, Titian, and their followers, such as Sebastiano del Piombo and Domenico Campagnola, and their attribution has been much debated. While some drawings of the group mentioned above were traditionally attributed to Giorgione, and later to his school (Rodolfo Pallucchini), others were given to the youthful Sebastiano del Piombo (Georg Gronau). In 1991, Alessandro Ballarin identified the entire group of drawings, including the present sheet, as belonging to Campagnola's pupil, Stefano Dall'Arzere, a conclusion now generally accepted. Born around 1505, Stefano Dall'Arzere trained with Domenico Campagnola in the early 1520s, and began his career as an independent artist around 1525. He is mentioned in Marco Pino's Dialogo di Pittura of 1548, which records him among those still alive as 'Stefano dell'argine giovane pittore', immediately following the naming of Domenico Campagnola. While Dall'Arzere's youthful career is less well documented, more information is available relating to the period around 1540, when he seems to have established himself as a successful painter in the Veneto. Around that time he painted the altarpiece of S. Mattia with Saints (1542) for the church of San Mattia, Padua, now preserved in the Duomo, Portogruaro. In 1540 and 1541 he is documented as having painted the now-lost organ shutters for the Basilica del Santo, Padua. Ballarin and Saccomani consider the present sheet from the earlier part of Dall'Arzere's career, when he was more closely associated with his teacher, Domenico Campagnola. As Saccomani has suggested, the drawing is most likely a study for the decoration of an apse, and thus an important document for early sixteenth century mural painting on the Venetian terra ferma . Professor Elisabetta Saccomani has kindly provided information essential to the preparation of this entry. |
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