Italian

From
the

Drawings
Collection

of Janos

Scholz

Italian drawingslent by Janos Scholz, as well as tains drawingsby Raphael,Correggio,Parseriesof sheets prints and drawingsthat have passedfrom his migianino,and a remarkable The collection to the Museum during threedecades, by the Zuccaro brothers. earliest drawing will be shownfrom May 9 to September12 in in the collection dated 1321;this raredocuis the ThomasJ. WatsonLibraryGalleries. ment heraldsa considerable group of early
JANOS SCHOLZ is a distinguished musician,

a cellist born in Hungary who became an American citizen in I939. Traveling extensively here and abroad to fulfill his concert engagements, he has scoured the known and often the secret sources where Italian drawings, increasingly rare on the international market, can still be found. His eye was trained to retain the exact look of pages of music, and this visual ability has served him brilliantly in studying drawings. Nearly thirty years of this search and research, which is in itself a good part of the true collector's pleasure, has enabled him to build up a group of Italian drawings that is perhaps unique among private collections in its extent and variety. Mr. Scholz is partial to so many periods and schools of Italian draughtsmanship and has been so fortunate in his quarry that his collection offers a panorama of the complex history of drawing in Italy. Certain groups of material merit special mention. Venice in the eighteenth century is represented in an unusually complete way. Fine examples by the dominating personalities are surrounded by significant works of lesser masters, chosen to reveal the interplay of stylistic currents in this felicitous period of Venetian art. Mr. Scholz has been a pioneer in the rediscovery of Italian Baroque draughtsmanship, and is the lucky possessorof beautiful examples illustrating the period. Not that the sixteenth century has been neglected; it suffices to mention that the collection con-

drawingsin which the Veroneseschool predominates. Mr. Scholz,a graduate the Royal Acadof emy of Music in Budapest,made his first
major concert appearanceat Salzburg in 1929.

An initial trip to America 1933as a memin ber of the Roth StringQuartetwasfollowed by annualconcerttoursin this country,and by I939 New York was his home. That this musicianshouldbe an ardentand inveterate collector is not surprising,for the passion wasin the family.His maternal ancestors had formed a collectionof musicalmanuscripts and booksthat became,in I813, the nucleus of the libraryof the ViennaSociety of the Friends of Music, and his grandfather was a universalcollector,interestedin pictures, sculpture,objetsd'art. The collector'surge struckMr. Scholz when he was very young. At the age of twelve he took a fancy to Roman coins,and as he grewolderhe turnedto faience,porcelain,and books. By the 1930s prints began to claim his attention, and he developedas well a taste for orientalcarpets that stillhauntshim.Then about I937he was smitten with a passionfor Italiandrawings, one that has gradually come to dominateall his activitiesas a collector. The engagingvariety of the collectionis apparent in the selection illustratedhere. Those who enjoy drawings-and they are moreand morenumerous thesedays- will be to Mr.Scholzforlending muchand so grateful so generouslyto the Metropolitan Museum.
J. B.

(On thecover)
GIOVANNI
BARBIERI,

FRANCESCO
CALLED

GUERCINO (1591-1666). KneelSaintSupported Two ing by Pen ink, Angels. andbrown brown wash.9156x inches. I36x
L.65.I4.Io

337

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MAY 1965

The

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PART TWO

Museum Metropolitan Art BU L L ET I N

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TEPOLO(1696-770).

Madonna Enthroned,Attendedby Three

eet of it kind

Tiepolo was the most brilliant and one of the most prolific Italian draughtsmen of the eighteenth century. Once he had received a pictorial commission he would turn out a whole series of preparatory drawings, and he kept most of these sketches in his studio where they formed a kind of reference library. The present fine example is not related to a surviving picture, but its style suggests a date around 1740.

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ANTONIO PISANELLO

DI PUCCIO

PISANO,

CALLED

(about 395-about 1455). A Team of WaterBuffaloes. Pen and brown ink, brown wash. 4Y6 x 7Y inches. L.65.14.8

In his pictures Pisanello portrayed a late Gothic world of fantastic pageantry, but as a draughtsman he was a man of the early Renaissance,concerned with the accurate observation of the world around him. Other versions of this fine study of two yoked water buffaloes are to be found in Rotterdam and in the Louvre.

VINCENZOCATENA

(about

48o-after I53I).

with Study of Drapery. Black chalk heightened white gouache, on blue-green paper. 7 x 716 inches. L.65.14.2 Catena, a Venetian artist of the Renaissance, made this elegant drapery study, in which every fold is finely modeled in white gouache, for the costume of the angel kneeling before the Virgin in an Annunciation that can be dated about 1515. The picture is now in the museum at Carpi.

338

ALESSANDRO

MAGANZA

(1556-after i630). Figure Studies. Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black lead pencil. so8 x 712 inches.L.65.i4.5 Following the lead of Jacopo Tintoretto, Venetian draughtsmanship took on increasing speed and brio as the sixteenth century advanced. Here Maganza, an artist who worked on into the next century, has dashed off with wonderful economy three different studies for a figure of the martyred St. Sebastian.

GIOVANNI FRANCESCO CALLED GUERCINO BARBIERI, (On the cover) (1591-i666). Kneeling Saint Supportedby Two Angels. Pen and brown ink, brown wash. 9156 x I i6 inches. L.65.i4.Io. (Below) Landscapewith a Volcano. Brush and brown wash on blue paper. 916/6 x I4Y4 inches. L.65.I4.4

Guercino as a painter and as a draughtsman was fascinated by dramatic contrasts of light and shadow. In the drawing on the cover he studied the placement and the lighting of two figures of angels who support the kneeling St. Philip Neri. The group was used in an altarpiece painted about I646 for the church of S. Maria di Galliera in Bologna. In Italy landscape came into its own as an independent subject in the seventeenth century, and was a favorite form of expression for Bolognese artists like Guercino. Here he has used brush and wash to conjure up an imaginary but perfectly convincing view of a volcano.

340

DOMENICO PIOLA ( 627-I703).

Studies of Allegorical Figures: Time and a Woman Holding

the Sun and the Moon. Brushand brownwash, overblackleadpencil. I I

x 164 inches.L.65.I4.6

Piola was a specialist in the frescoed decoration of palaces and churches. This suave and assured design with alternative solutions for an allegorical group in a roundel must have been drawn as a project for the ceiling decoration of some palace in Genoa.

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(Opposite) ANTONIO CANAL, CALLED

CANALETTO (1697-1768). Architectural Pen and brown ink, gray and brown Capriccio.
wash, over black crayon. I I1 x 816 inches.

L.65.I4.I Canaletto in his views of Venice and Rome was sometimes tempted to group together monuments that were actually situated far from one another, or to add imaginary buildings to real cityscapes. These capricci were much to the taste of the time. Here he has given us a fairly accurate view of the Rio di Pieta in Venice with the apse of the church of S. Lorenzo at the right. But to the left he has added an imaginary campanileand closed the composition in the foreground with a non-existent bridge.

GIOVANNI

BATTISTA

PIRANESI

(1720-1778). Standing Male Figures. Pen and

inches. L.65.I4.7

These gesticulating figures were studied by Piranesi, in an elegant, abbreviated pen style, for the spectators who stride about in his late engravings that represent real and fantastic monuments of classicalantiquity.

343

PIER

LEONE

GHEZZI

(1674-I755).

An Ecclesiastic Playing the Cello. Pen and brown ink.

9g8 x 74 inches. L.65.I4.3

Ghezzi made a specialty of drawing caricaturesof the celebrities and the hangers-on in Roman society of the first half of the eighteenth century. This cello-playing priest is identified only as M. L'Abbe in the inscription at the bottom of the sheet, but the artist has more fully described him on the reverse as Il virtuosodel Sigr. De Bacquevilleand has dated the drawing March 724.

344