Allegorical scene with five Tuscan poets

Details

Vincenzo Tamagni (San Gimignano 1492-1516)
Allegorical scene with five Tuscan poets
black chalk, pen and brown ink
11 3/8 x 10 in. (29 x 25.4 cm)

Provenance

Unidentified collector (L. 4699, associated with Nicholas Lanier).
with Colnaghi, London.
Christie’s, London, 10 July 1973, lot 66 (attributed to Sodoma).

Literature

R.A. Scorza, ‘A New Drawing for the Florentine ‘Apparato’ of 1565: Borghini, Butteri and the ‘Tuscan Poets’’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXVII, no. 993 (December, 1995), p. 888, fig. 79 (as G.A. Butteri).

Sale Room Notice

Please note additional provenance and literature:
Provanance:
Christie’s, London, 10 July 1973, lot 66 (as Beccafumi).
Literature:
R.A. Scorza, ‘A New Drawing for the Florentine ‘Apparato’ of 1565: Borghini, Butteri and the ‘Tuscan Poets’’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXVII, no. 993 (December, 1995), p. 888, fig. 79 (as G.A. Butteri).

The composition relates to a larger and more finished drawing in Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (inv. D 1799) attributed by Scorza to Giovanni Maria Butteri (R.A. Scorza, ‘Borghi, Butteri and Allori: A Further Drawing for the 1565 Apparato’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXVII, no. 1104, 1995, fig. 49) but not considered autograph more recently by Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (in Michelangelo, Vasari and Their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi, New York, 2008, p. 161).

Brought to you by

Furio Rinaldi

frinaldi@christies.com +1 212 636 2328

Lot Essay

Gathering together Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Guido Cavalcanti, the great Tuscan poets, this sophisticated allegory of knowledge was likely executed by Tamagni as an emblem for a literary academy or for a book illustration. All four wear laurel wreaths, symbolic of literary achievement, and stand before a celestial globe, which also appears in Giorgio Vasari's painting The six Tuscan poets (Minneapolis Art Institute). A pupil of Sodoma, Tamagni worked with Raphael and Peruzzi in Rome.

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