3. Italian School (Tuscan?)
Early 16th Century

Three Eagles with a Kill

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Italian School (Tuscan?), Eagles

Three Eagles with a Kill

Original drawing in pen and brown ink, 168 x 268 mm., ex collection: Philip Hofer (Lugt 2087a, but without stamp). Fine, early, two-sided study sheet of eagles on old laid paper showing a small fragment of a watermark; a strong vertical crease in the center, ink stains verso. According to a curator’s note on another drawing in the British Museum, “A number of similar late fifteenth-century Florentine studies attest to the popularity and circulation of designs in a model or pattern book with studies of single or paired eagles.” One should note the complex hatching and cross-hatching, which is used here to define neither form nor light, but is rather description of surfaces and at times almost abstract patterning.