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A Friar and a Nun Holding a Book
  • A Friar and a Nun Holding a Book

    TitleA Friar and a Nun Holding a Book
  • Technique/ MaterialPoint of the brush and brown ink, heightened with white on brown, prepared paper. Verso: See NMH 94/
  • DimensionsDimensions: (h x b) 16,5 x 14,2 cm
  • Artist/Maker Artist: Benozzo Gozzoli, Italian, born 1420, dead 1497. Workshop of
    Former attribution: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Italian, born 1449, dead 1494
  • CategoryDrawings, Free-hand drawings
  • ClassificationDrawing
  • Inventory No.NMH 93/1863
  • AcquisitionÖvertagande 1866 från Kongl. Museum (Lugt 1638)
  • Description
    Literature
    Artist/Maker
    Images and media

    The sheet consists of two drawings glued together vertically. Old repair along the lower edge. Inscribed in pen and brown ink at lower right: Gh(ir)landaio. Numbered in pen and brown ink at upper left: 135(?) and at lower right 28.

    The nun represents S. Agnes of Assisi, painted in the choir of S. Francesco in Montefalco. The drawing is a copy after Gozzoli's original executed by one of his pupils. The drawing is by the same hand as the franciscan friar 34/1963 (no. 1061).

    This sheet, as well as three more in Nationalmuseum, can be traced back to a pattern book which originally contained 85 sheets, 36 of which are known to day. By far the largest group is in an album in Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam containing 20 sheets. Some sheets were removed from the album already in the 16th century - the four sheets in Nationalmuseum, for example, once belonged to Vasari - and the old numbering can still be found on nine of these sheets (three in Nationalmuseum).
    The drawings in the album are executed by different members of the Gozzoli workshop but are so homogeneous that the different hands are impossible to identify. Only three original drawings by Gozzoli have been identified so far as originating from the patternbook.
    Sirén compares the drawing verso with NM 58/1863, this catalogue no. 1041, with the same subject [Bjurström, It. Drawings, cat. no. 1027 (recto)]