Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)
ZOLTÁN KÁRPÁTI: A Late Drawing by Domenico Campagnola
differences are already more conspicuous. Although both sheets are similarly sketchy, the dynamic outlines of the Chatsworth drawing are replaced in that of Budapest by stiffer, harder contours, and the modelling represented by the sinuous parallel lines typical of Campagnola is exchanged for a dense crosshatching following the spatial forms. The Budapest sheet not only lacks the internal movement and rhythm of Campagnola's late drawings, but also bears a typical feature of copies: the unintentional distortion of proportions, as witnessed not only by the irregularly elongated figures, but likewise by the unusually small heads and hands. All things considered, the Budapest sheet is surely not a drawing of Campagnola's own hand, but rather a copy after a variation of the Chatsworth sheet, produced in the circle of the Paduan master in the second half of the sixteenth century. According to the evidence of the incised outlines of the drawing and the verso painted like carbon paper, the compositions were simply traced at the same time. While no engraving or woodcut related to this drawing has survived, it is nevertheless probable that the Budapest sheet was employed and transfered in the daily practice of the workshop, and that the compositional sketch likewise played an important role in the training of the apprentices. To return to the drawing of Campagnola's own hand, Mary Magdalene Arriving to Marseilles, it is by no means solitary among the artist's late works. The closest parallel is The Penitent Mary Magdalene at the Teyler Museum, Haarlem (fig. 42). ll) It is not merely the thematic connection that links the two sheets, but they are produced on exactly the same light buff paper, which, according to the watermark on the Budapest sheet, is Venetian paper of ca. 1559-62, with nearly identical chain lines, of correspondingly toned reddish-brown ink, with a slightly flat-tipped pen. The dissolved character of the drawings is created by the broad, flowing, rhythmic strokes. The dominant motif of both compositions is the characteristically horizontally extending landscape, in which an unobstructed vista opens onto the distance, across the figures in the foreground and the gentle slopes in the middle ground. Albeit a narrower section of the environment is visible in the Haarlem drawing, countless identical features can be detected in the handling of the two landscapes. The massive cliffs, emphasised with dense hatching, and framing both sides of the composition, are similar, as is the foliage of the near trees and bushes, the sweeping bends of the landscape leading into the middle ground, the gentle slopes planted with woods formed by small semicircles interconnecting in the background, and the mountain peaks suggested only with their silhouettes. The distant tower delineated with altogether a couple of distinct lines,
