January 2009

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The style and technique of both Dresden drawings (C1967-151 and 1967-150) seem close to Giulio Campi: one thinks of his ambitious drawings for the St George and the Dragon of the mid-1540s (Regional Museum inv. ca521, Teplice), but a tantalising resemblance also exists to the work by Giulio’s younger brother, Antonio Campi (1523-87), of the 1560s and early 1570s, years when Antonio was present in Milan. Be these finer points of authorship as they may, the imposing iconography of St Ambrose in the two large Dresden sheets certainly suggests projects connected with the city of Milan, and during the second half of the cinquecento numerous drawings were being produced in fierce competitions among local and foreign artists, to secure public projects.

A distinctive drawing by Antonio Campi in the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden – indeed, one may consider it among his most expressive and accomplished -- is a sheet discovered relatively recently (Fig. 5)12, but which was published, in my opinion, with an erroneous attribution to Vincenzo Campi (1530/35-91), the youngest of the three famous brothers,13 based on the misleading fact that it resembles the composition of a genre scene on canvas by Vincenzo, the Ricotta Eaters (‘I mangiaricotta’), painted c. 1585, which is known in several versions, of various quality. Yet here, however, I would argue, the weight of the evidence in regard to the question of authorship is documentary, given that numerous drawings by Antonio Campi, including many sheets in black chalk, and among these, one of the chief examples, which is exactly comparable in type and medium to the Dresden sheet, now at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Cod. f. 220 Inf. 8; Fig. 7), bear inscriptions by Antonio’s son, Claudio, so as to leave no doubt about the authorship of all such drawings: ‘Di mano del cavagliero Anto/Canpo padre di me Claudio’ (By the hand of Cavaliere Antonio Campi, father to me Claudio).

The Dresden sheet displays Antonio’s entirely characteristic use of the black chalk with strong, reductive outlines and very bold, curved hatching for interior modelling; also evident is his hallmark habit of squaring even sketchily outlined compositions and figures. A more logical explanation for the resemblance between the drawing and the painted canvases, therefore, may be that the younger Vincenzo (whose paintings often betray an infirm grasp of figural anatomy) at times borrowed inspiration from his older brother’s drawings.