Drawing, 1400-1600

Invention and Innovation

Stuart Currie

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138311527
• eBook ISBN: 9780429858703
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this volume twelve scholars explore ways in which drawings were employed and appreciated in various European Cities form late medieval times, through the Renaissance and Reformation periods and into the early seventeenth century. The essayists examine the relationship between preparatory sketches and finished artworks in more durable and expensive materials, and consider the roles played by various drawing types, such as studies from different kinds of model and student copies from a master's exemplar. They also investigate how drawings and their mechanically- reproduced equivalents- engravings, etchings and other forms of print – came to be collected for both practical and connoisseurial purposes, and how iconographical and stylistic inventiveness were linked to imaginative artistic interpretations of traditional subjects and to technical innovations in drawing and printmaking. Through diverse approaches to the study of artists' attitudes and ambitions, the essays in Drawing 1400-1600 offer ways of appreciating the complex and fascinating history of the practice and theory of drawing over two centuries during which the expressive potential of the medium was realized in some of the greatest artistic statements of all time.

1
Drawing and design in late fourteenth-century France: the case for the sculptor

Julia Watson

The second half of the fourteenth century was an extremely rich period for the production of sculpture in France. Although the great Gothic cathedral enterprises had provided a prominent forum for sculptural cycles, by the fourteenth century an arena of differing character was offered by the secular world. Its great patrons, the kings, dukes and nobility of France, created new employment for sculptors, and a demand for monumental figure sculpture and decorative work. At the turn of the century, such a situation was exemplified by the cycle of statues of the kings of France commissioned for the Palais de la Cité by Philippe le Bel (1285-1314). In the second half of the century, the reigns of Jean le Bon (1350-1364), Charles V (1364-1380) and Charles VI (1380-1422) brought new building campaigns for the construction of chateaux, palaces, gateways, and chapels, and a new interest in the potential of imagery to convey power and prestige. Charles V had statues of himself and his queen, Jeanne de Bourbon, erected over the gateways to his palaces at the Louvre, the Bastille, and Vincennes, as well as at the entrance to his foundation of the Célestins in Paris. The famous ten-statue display on the Louvre staircase also featured figures of the king and queen and their two male heirs, the dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy and Orléans, the Virgin and St John, and two sergeants of arms.1

Outside Paris, Jean de Berry's constructions included the Palais de Poitiers and the Tour Maubergeon, complete with nineteen large-scale figures; the Sainte-Chapelle at Bourges, the internal decoration of which included life-size statues of apostles, with a further five statues on the portal; and the monumental chimney-pieces of the Palais de Bourges and the Palais de Poitiers, the latter ornamented with a sculptural programme of portrait figures and angels bearing coats of arms. Similar cycles of apostles, nine worthies, and portrait figures were commissioned by the dukes of Burgundy and Orléans for chapels, château exteriors, and monumental chimney-pieces. These portrait statues of the rulers of France linked with angels supporting the arms of France formed part of the repackaging and reaffirmation of the public image of the new Valois dynasty.

The increased demand for sculptural works was met by numerous able sculptors, many of whose names are known to us, including Guy de Dammartin, Jean de Saint-Romain, Jean de Thoiry, Jean de Liège, André Beauneveu, Jean de Cambrai, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, Claus de Werve, and Jacques de Baerze, to name only the most renowned today.² Until recently, their practice and working environment have received little attention.³ In seeking to address such issues, this paper will present evidence from contemporary documents for the use of drawing by fourteenth-century French sculptors.

Two issues will be dealt with: the rights of the sculptor with regard to drawing and design, and the surviving evidence for the execution and employment of drawings by sculptors of the period. The first part of the paper will look at the legislation and regulations on the working practice of sculptors. The second part will present evidence for the execution and use of drawings by sculptors. It will be seen that drawing was not restricted to paper or parchment but frequently extended to execution on other surfaces, particularly plaster.

In 1391, Parisian painters and sculptors received a renewal and revision of the guild statutes controlling their métier, which had remained more or less unchanged since those of 1263 recorded by Etienne Boileau.⁴ Thirty-one painters and sculptors were present at the granting of these statutes by Jean de Folleville, counsellor of Charles VI and Provost of Paris. Their names are recorded in the introduction to the statutes, where they are listed as 25 painters and six sculptors or tailleurs d'images, although it should be noted that some of those listed among the painters are known to have worked also as sculptors.⁵ Until this time, the statutes had not referred to design, but were concerned mainly with the quality of the work and materials, and with the control of personnel. But Item 17 of the amended 1391 Statuts des tailleurs d'images, scirfpteurs, peintres et enlumineurs de la ville de Paris, reads as follows:

That no one of the said metier should sell a piece of work to the community, such as the colleges, convents and parishes, or other works, of which the merchandise is above 100 sols or six livres, but only with a good cirographe or lettres, made of the work and of the contents, as much for carving as for painting: such a cirographe should be double, the ouvrier will have one to better make his work, and those to whom the work will belong will have the other, so that if there is dispute between the latter parties, one should pay regard to the aforesaid cirographe and the piece of work in order to judge and advise whether the ouvrier will have done his work or not, and in case that he will not have, that he should be held to do it and improve it according to the terms of the said cirographe.⁶

Here we have a definite indication that a contract was employed, and indeed required. Whether this included a drawing or design is unclear - it may have consisted only of a detailed description. However, the contract had to include sufficent information on both carving and polychromy for it to be compared with the completed sculpture. Whether the cirograplie and lettres were alternative types of contract is unclear, but both had to be in duplicate.⁷

Further evidence is supplied in the Statuts des tailleurs de pierre de Strasbourg of 1459, where the only reference to design occurs in article 10:

If a master has accepted the construction of a work and has established the design (dessin) according to which the work should be executed, he should not modify this earlier drawing (trace). But he must execute the work according to the plan which he will have presented to the seigneurs, town or country so that the work should not be diminished or depreciated.⁸

Here the reference is to a drawing which fills the role of a contract drawing committing the stone-cutters and sculptors to an agreed design. As methods did not change greatly it is possible that, although not included in earlier statutes, the practice of executing a design with a contract was usual.

As yet I have not come across any statutory evidence to confirm the control of the design of sculptural works, and would conclude that the commissioned sculptor carried out the design as well as the work, unless asked to do otherwise, as was the case with the tomb for Louis d'Orléans. The questioning of this rather obvious working practice arises from evidence of disputes between fifteenth-century Netherlandish painters' and sculptors' guilds in which the painters frequently claimed the right to execute the design for a sculptural work as well as its polychromy.⁹ It should be said that the guilds in France were weak and relatively inactive in comparison to those of Flanders, which perhaps reflects the lack of autonomous status of French towns during the period. However, in one of the documents relating to retables sculpted by Jacques de Baerze for Philippe le Hardi's foundation of the Chartreuse de Champmol at Dijon, the certifficacion for payment was given by Melchior Broederlam, the duke's painter, who had also been responsible for the polychromy of the sculpted retable and the painting of its wings,¹⁰ and who, therefore, would have been in an ideal position to judge the quality of the carving. But can this be the only reason?

Although few drawings have survived from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and hardly any that are attributed to sculptors, there is a considerable amount of documentary evidence for the execution of drawings by sculptors. It should be noted that the division between masons, stonecutters and sculptors, or imagiers, was not clearly defined. Guy de Dammartin, who worked as architect and Maître général des oeuvres for Jean, duc de Berry, had worked previously as a sculptor, carving some of the portrait statues for the Louvre staircase, arid may have continued to work as a sculptor. Secondly, it has become clear that much of the architectural sculpture (capitals, friezes, etc.) was often carved by tailleurs de pierre, or stonecutters, rather than by imagiers. However, there was a definite division between sculptors working in stone or marble and those who worked in wood. The latter were classified either as carpenters, or as maîtres des menues oeuvres or menuisiers, craftsmen who made small-scale works in wood as opposed to the carpentry of roofs and other large wooden structures.

Amongst the construction accounts for the Palais de Poitiers and the Tour Maubergeon which cover the years 1384-1395, and which survive in part, is the reference, dated 21 November 1384, to a large skin of parchment being ordered from. Colas le parchemineur for Jehan Guerart (Guy de Dammartin's lieutenant at Poitiers) 'to portray the design of the works which Monseigneur had ordered to be made at the Tour Maubergeon'.¹¹ The design referred to could have been for the masonry work, details of construction or sculptural decoration.¹² The figure sculpture would have been subject to a separate study.

The largely surviving construction accounts for Philippe le Hardi's undertaking of the Chartreuse de Champmol supply several indications of the use of drawing. They document Drouet de Dammartin, who was engaged by the duke in 1383 as 'maître général des oeuvres de maçonnerie pour tons ses pays', as working in the large room of the Hotel de la Motte at Champmol 'a faire les traiz des ediffices et les tradés de pierres'.¹³ They also state that the masons, Perrin Gairey and Girart de Fleurey, set out a layer of very flat plaster on the floor of this upper room on which Drouet could trace his plans and working drawings for the cutting of stone.¹⁴

From August 1391, Jehan Baudet, the master carpenter, was installed in another large room situated in the Accounts building (batiment de la Dépense), where he made the tracing or sketch (tracé) of the woodcarving for the oratory. Robert de Cambrai, the master glassmaker, who supplied 'seven pieces of white glass for a panel to put in the window of the grand salle where Jehan Baudet was working', on 6 August 1391 paid 15 gros to 'Huguenin Lamoinier, resident of Dijon, for the making of a partial plastering in the salle which is above that of the Accounts of the Chartreuse ... to make the drawings of the oratory of Monseigneur at the aforesaid Champmol'. In February 1398, sand was supplied for making a plaster for the designs (traiz) of the masonry and construction of the fountain for the large cloister.¹⁵ The fountain was adorned with six over-life-size sculptures of prophets and six weeping angels, and supported a sculpted tableau of Christ on the cross flanked by figures of the Virgin, St John and the Magdalene. Claus Sluter made a tracé on the plaster of the ornamention of the huge hexagonal pedestal base for this sculpted Calvary.¹⁶ However, I have not found any indication of how these drawings were made, and it remains uncertain whether they were executed in charcoal or chalk, or whether they were incised into the plaster with a sharp tool. It is possible that the initial drawing was executed in chalk or metalpoint prior to the final design being inscribed in the plaster. The definitive design, which was fixed to the plaster, could then be transferred as needed by the sculptors. At Poitiers, a chambre anx traiz is referred to in an account for the supply of sand,¹⁷ and, from the documents of Champmol, we know that sand was used in the making of plaster. In England a contemporary trasyng hons, or room for executing drawings, is recorded at Exeter in the fabric rolls of 1374-5.¹⁸

Plaster was not the only base for drawings, paper was also in use. Many of the accounts of the works conducted by Guy de Dammartin for Jean, due de Berry refer to a papier on which his instructions were recorded.¹⁹ It is unclear whether these instructions were simply written on the papier or whether drawings and designs were included as well. One would imagine that drawings would convey Guy's plans more precisely than a description. In the 1395-96 accounts, there is a further record of payment to Jehan Baudet, the master carpenter, for work on the Chapelle des Anges ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Drawing and design in late fourteenth-century France: the case for the sculptor
• 2 Imitation, invention or good business sense? The use of drawings in a group of fifteenth-century French Books of Hours
• 3 Training and practice in the early Renaissance workshop: observations on Benozzo Gozzoli's Rotterdam Sketchbook
• 4 Maso Finiguerra and early Florentine printmaking
• 5 Mantegna and Pollaiuolo: artistic personality and the marketing of invention
• 6 Luca Signorelli's studies of the human figure
• 7 The 'Deutsch' and the 'Welsch': Jörg Breu the Elder's sketch for the Story of Lucretia and the uses of classicism in sixteenth-century Germany
• 8 Vasari, prints and imitation
• 9 Invenzione, disegno e fatica: two drawings by Giovambattista Naldini for an altarpiece in post-Tridentine Florence
• 10 Drawings for Bartolomeo Passarotti's Book of Anatomy
• 11 Antonio Tempesta as printmaker: invention, drawing and technique
• 12 Early modern collecting in Northern Europe: copied drawings and printed prototypes
• Index