Antonio Gionima, Visitation | Old Master Drawings

Edited by Luca Giunta Baroni — November 2021

This great Visitation, executed with vigorous strokes of brown ink applied with a brush and heightened with white lead, can be recognised as a typical product of the hand of Antonio Gionima, Venetian by birth but active throughout his short life in Bologna¹.

The sum of the mixed stylistic influences absorbed by the young and talented Antonio is visible in our drawing. If the powerful male nude seen from behind of the beggar in the foreground evokes the neo-Carraccesque manner of his first teacher Aureliano Milani (1765-1749), the elongated facial type of the Virgin's face and the oval profile of the female figure in the lower left refer to the style of Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665- 1647), who welcomed Gionima into his workshop after Milani moved to Rome in 1718.

Fig. 1. Antonio Gionima, The Feast of Belshazzar. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, highlighted with white, over black chalk, on brownish paper, 285 × 380 mm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 80.3.425

Stylistically and technically, the sheet can be compared to The Feast of Belshazzar in New York (fig. 1). Here, as well as in our Annunciation, some neo-Venetian elements, indebted with the great Renaissance tradition (Veronese) are mixed with the influence of modern Venetian masters such as Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734). The latter’ influx is recognisable in the chromatic rendering of the figures, brilliantly executed with the tip of the brush, in the monumental architectural frame and in the presence of animated figures in the background².

This drawing can be identified as part of that group of large-scale drawings, both upright and horizontal, executed in pen and wash, for which, according to Gionima’s biographer, Luigi Crespi, the artist had a particular inclination.

This sort of work on paper was avidly sought after by the collectors of the time, who esteemed them as much as the oil sketches and small-format paintings: 'he [Gionima] drew admirably in pencil and watercolour, highlighting his drawings with an unrivalled spirit and ease, characterising his nudes with a greatness of parts, with such a fair and straight outline, that he could serve as an example to his fellow disciples... The drawings then, which he made, are many, and for the most part made in watercolour and highlighted, and whoever owns them, rightly keeps them dear'³.

Notes Show/Hide

¹ The main source of information on Gionima is the admired biography dedicated to him by Luigi Crespi (1769, III, pp. 234-237), to be integrated with Pierguidi 2001, ad vocem. Still essential are the contributions by Patrizi 1959, pp. 409-156 and Roli 1960, pp. 300-307. Among the most recent studies see Johnson 2004, pp. 343-345 and Zapletalová 2013, pp. 441-466. On the drawings see Kurz 1955, pp. 110 segg.; Firenze 1973, pp. 101 segg; Miller 1985, pp. 776-777, 779; Cabassi 1995, pp. 125-139, and Shoolman Slatkin 1996, pp. 72- 79.

² On the drawing and its model see Bean, Griswold 1990, pp. 89-91; on the neo-Venetian elements see in particular Firenze 1973, pp. 101-103.

³ ‘[Gionima] disegnava col toccalapis e con acquarello a meraviglia, lumeggiando i suoi disegni con uno spirito ed una disinvoltura che non potevali bramare di più, caratterizzando i suoi nudi con una grandiosità di parti, con un dintorno così giusto e franco, che potevano servire di esemplare ai suoi condiscepoli... I disegni poi, ch’egli ha fatto, sono moltissimi, e per lo più acquerellati e lumeggiati, e chiunque ne ha, se gli tiene, à tutta ragione, molto cari’ (Crespi 1769, III, pp. 235, 237). The same watermark present in our drawing, a 'CS' within a circle, can be found in another drawing by Gionima at the Uffizi (inv. 20439 F) coming the Malvezzi collection, on which see Firenze 1973, pp. 101-103.