Gian Girolamo Savoldo as a Draughtsman. Attribution and Practice

Too little is known about Gian Girolamo Savoldo (1480 ca. – post 1548) as a painter and even more is concealed regarding him as a draftsman, due to both a notable lack of evidence and a limited scholarly production. The paper addresses the attribution of a corpus of a dozen drawings to Gian Girolamo, as well as the role of the graphic studies within his pictorial practice. Regarding authorship, the highly intense realism of the models drawn from life with painterly rendering allows to single them out prudently among the painted figures, thus bolstering and/or revising the attribution of the drawings. Moreover, the latter is also evaluated on stylistic and technical grounds. With reference to the role of drawing in Savoldo’s pictorial practice, Gian Girolamo seemed to have focused mostly on the development of his figures, rather than on the composition of the works, as only figural and head studies survive. In addition, the recurrence of drawn figures (3) and models (2) in diverse paintings could arguably imply a partly drawing-related practice, likewise confirming Savoldo’s inclination to the repetition of alike depicted subjects. Despite the emphasis on meticulously capturing the plays of light and shade, the absence of multiple preparatory studies of the same model impedes the definition of the role of drawings in Gian Girolamo’s peculiar pictorial light variation. Finally, the paper addresses the alignment of his graphic idiom to Lombard and Venetian peers.