Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (Fiesole 1437-Florence 1493)

Madonna and Child

Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash on tan laid paper, 261 x 105 mm, 10 1/4 x 4 5/32 in. Watermark: Key.

This monumental study of the Madonna and Child in a niche closely resembles a group of pages taken from a sketchbook and now divided among the British Museum, the Musée Condé in Chantilly, Berlin, Hamburg, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pen technique, above all the hatching, and the characteristic forms of the faces, hands, and feet are strikingly similar, as well as the drapery folds. One should also note that the use of wash in this drawing resembles that of Francesco’s drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The present drawing is more finished than the sketchbook pages, and larger in scale, and it is therefore probably a ricordo of a sculpture or perhaps a study for a finished work. Both types of drawing would show close attention to details of contour and surface, as in this sheet.

Caroline Lanfranc de Panthou in her discussion of the eight sketchbook pages at Chantilly, gives a comprehensive summary of the problems surrounding the attribution. Francesco di Simone Ferrucci should be considered securely the author of the drawings, not because of the circumstantial arguments of earlier scholars, but because of the connection established by Sirèn between a drawing in Stockholm and Francesco’s tomb for Alessandro Tartagni (1479-80) in the Church of San Domenico at Bologna, his only signed work.

Vasari mentions Francesco di Simone in his life of Verrochio as a pupil of the master. Since they were almost the same age, he has been described as more of an assistant. The Tartagni monument suggests that his style may already have been substantially formed by Desiderio da Settignano before he came under the influence of Verrocchio. In any case the sketchbook pages constitute an encyclopedic view of sculptural forms and gestures current in Central Italy in the late 1480’s, executed in a lively and charming pen style.

by Michael Miller
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