Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

een associated, despite its clearly superior quality with a published group
of portrait drawings also linked with the altarpiece 3 . Six of these drawings, all
executed in black chalk, are in the Kunstmuseum in Basel and superficially,
they appear to be drawn in a similar manner with long curving strokes of the
chalk and careful shading and stumping. They are, however, uniform in their
lack of spontaneity and animation, absences giving them the appearance of
being copies or workshop exercises. The same cannot be said of the present
drawing in which the subtlety and variation of the handling creates a vivid
sense of the person depicted. Intriguingly, the sitter wears a fur-collared coat,
which already differentiates him from the Apostles who are dressed in fulllength
linen robes and from the Basel drawings which mostly show tunics.
This difference, combined with the fact that the sitter looks reflectively within
rather than at something specific as the Apostles do, highlights the possibility
that rather than being a study related to the altarpiece, it is a working likeness
either itself done to commission or in preparation for a painted portrait.
The function of Hans Baldung’s drawings is often unclear, as has been pointed
out by Martha Wolff, and whether the chalk drawings in general are preparatory
stages, or part of a broader workshop process has yet to be established 4 .
What is clear is that the range of drawings associated with Baldung Grien
are widely differing in quality and, presumably, purpose. While the Basel
group mentioned above must surely be part of a workshop production, a
drawing such as the well-known red chalk study of two male heads in the
British Museum must count as an example of the master’s most characteristic,
virtuoso work in which patterns are created out of the lines of shading and the
facial features are given an exaggerated style making the heads into slightly
fantastical types 5 . Certainly a good proportion of Hans Baldung’s work, both
in prints and drawings, have a heightened expressiveness in the tradition of
Grunewald who was active around Strasburg at the time. The present head,
in comparison, shows a great attention to fine and realistic detail, in the
movement of the dense and flowing beard, the shell like whorls of the ear
and, most particularly, in the extraordinary subtlety of the treatment of the
eyes and eyebrows and the shading of the skin.
While Frits Koreny and Christof Metzger, both of whom have recently
examined the drawing, consider it to be of clearly greater artistic merit than
the rather static drawings in Basel, Frits Koreny believes the present sheet
to be the work of an assistant of Hans Baldung; Christof Metzger, on the
other hand, judging the style and fineness of the draughtsmanship and the
particular manner in which the eyes, hair and beard are drawn, believes it
to be by Baldung Grien himself, suggesting that it was indeed made at the
same time as the great altarpiece. The aspects of the drawing which Christof
Metzger highlights: its superior quality and expressivity, the fine modelling
and characteristic technique of using dark outlines and stumping, the brilliant
depiction of the eyes together with the highly effective evocation of the fur
coat all support the attribution and, further, argue for this being a work of
direct observation, a face to face study with a realistic purpose in mind. In
effect it is also an examination of the processes of age and thought acting on
a human head and perhaps in this respect it is a step towards one of Baldung
Grien’s well-known monogrammed woodcuts, the Head of an Old Man from
1518/19 6 .
On Durer’s death in 1528, Baldung is recorded as having been left a lock
of his former master’s hair. Joseph Koerner suggested, that this could have
acted as the transmission of an artistic inheritance, a symbol not only of the
relationship of master to former pupil, now himself an established artist, but
also of a shared fascination with depicting hair and fur and of the ambivalence
and duality which is often at the heart of both their works 7 .
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enlarged detail