Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2007)

SZILVIA BODNÁR: On the Draughtsmanship of Caspar Freisinger

the artist, essential even today, in which he enumerates about seventy drawings by the master including the copies and questionable attributions, appeared in 1940.- He also analysed the Budapest self-portrait in detail.

6 He remarked that the date 1581 on the upper banderol might be erroneous, since the artist became a master only in 1583, the year when he also gained citizenship, and so could not have earlier called himself a "Painter from Ingolstadt". Thöne finds the date 1586 or 1587 more probable. Later literature does not share this view. Although the style of the first and last digits are different, it is hard to imagine that the latter could be anything other than "one". Rising to the level of master and subsequently gaining citizenship do not rule out that Freisinger was already active in Ingolstadt by 1581. The self-portrait displays Freisinger's idiosyncratic style: the space is well-constructed, plastic forms are suggested by parallel, continuous zigzag lines and hatching, and a similar head type with curly hair characteristically recurs in the artist's later sheets. The surprising fact that no dated drawings by Freisinger between 1581 and 1589 have survived may partly explain Thöne's doubts, but from 1589 till Freisinger's death dated works are known from nearly every year. Another drawing in Budapest showing Venus and Adonis, also published by Thöne but without any commentaries, was produced in 1589 (fig. 2).

7 The composition renders two moments of the story of Venus and Adonis related in Ovid's Metamorphoses (10, 519-739). In the foreground Venus narrates to Adonis, who is intimately seated by her side, how Atalanta rivalled with Hippomenes, while in the background the goddess tries to restrain her lover from the fatal wild boar hunt. Cupid, lying in the foreground, takes part in the scene not MART1NO ROTA A FT E R TITIAN, VENUS AND ADONIS. LONDON. THE BRITISH MUSEUM