Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
ZOLTÁN KÁRPÁTI: After Polidoro: A Newly Identified Drawing by Livio Mehus
5 riETRO DA CORTONA. STUDY AFTER THE FAÇADE DECORATION OF PALAZZO MILESL FLORENCE, BIBLIOTECA RICCARD1 AN A in his workshop. The attribution of the drawings in the Biblioteca Riccardiana was supported by their stylistic affinity with Livio Mehus' two early, signed drawings.' Marco Chiarini convincingly argued that they were made in the period when, urged by his master, the young painter went to Rome in 1650, after working as an apprentice to Pietro da Cortona (1596M669) in the Palazzo Pitti, painting the ceiling frescos of the Sala di Marte in the winter apartment of Grand Duke Ferdinand II. In Rome he ardently copied the ancient works with Stefano della Bella (1610M 664), and even drew quick chalk sketches of the Farnese Hercules and the Column of Trajan on the versos of the previously discussed Florentine sheets. 18 Mehus spent quite a long time in Cortona's workshop —first from 1645 in Florence, and then, a decade later, from 1655 in Rome —where he might well have seen the drawings made by his master after the façade of the Palazzo Milesi. In the 1620s, Gortona not only copied the ancient works in Rome but also the façades of famous palazzi. 19 A large-format Cortona drawing depicting a scene from the Niobe frieze of the façade is preserved in the collection of the Courtauld Institute, London (fig. 5). 20 The London sheet is more detailed and more plastically modelled with its blue and brown shades and intense highlights. In contrast, the drawings by Mehus have a far more fluent and painterly character. However, Cortona's vigorous and pastoso use of white to imitate the relief-like character of the frescos —"which appear to be not painted but truly of metal" 21 —clearly inspired the young Mehus. Zoltán Kárpáti is curator of early Italian drawings and prints at the Museum, of Fine Arts, Budapest.
