A Drawing for Raphael's 'Saint George' Author(s): John Shearman Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 125, No.

958 (Jan., 1983), pp. 2+15-25 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/880868 Accessed: 19/10/2010 05:19
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THE

SERLUPI

CHAPEL scutorum camereurbis et pro alia parti etc. me quingentorum pro medietate notario etc.presente etc.... domini f0709r ... ActumRome in domoeiusdem Sti Angeli Jo:Philippi in Regione presentibusetc. AlexandroSperanza de Sto Martino Aquilane diocesiset Domenico Antonii Senense testibus AngelideSerchiano etc. quondam c) Act of 8th October 1561 containing the verdict of the arbitrators regarding the difference over the decoration of the Serlupi Chapel.

ActumRome in domosolite habitationis fo110v ... eorundem dominorum lohannis et cetera Philippi et Marci Antonii in regioneSancti Angeli presentibus domino lohanne Baptista de Accattarissalernitano causarum et procuratore lacobolohanne et cetera. Marzerii[ ...... ] testibus Curtius Saccocius deSantisnotarius depremissis rogatus. b)Act of 28th September 1561 regarding the appointment of two arbitrators in connection with the difference over the decoration of the Serlupi Chapel.

Collegio dei Notari Capitolini, Vol.1519

f0708v Indictione mensis dievigesima octava 1561. quinta septembris constitutinobilis dominus In presentia etc. personaliter Jo:Philippus de de Picchispictorex alterasponteetc. Serlupisex una et magisterFranciscus ac omni meliori modo etc. compromiserunt etc. omnesdifferentias etc. quas habentetc. de et superlaboritiiset picturaper ipsummagistrum Franciscum etc. in facta in capella Ste Marie de Araceli cum omnibusdependentibus dominumAlex.m Corvinum electumpro parte dicti dominiJo:Philippi et dominumMarium Falerinum domini Car.li de familiarem Reverendissimi Aug.a [Cardinalisde Augusta]electum pro parte magistriFrancisciarbitros absentes etc. quibus etc. dederunt etc. procedendi ac terminandi potestatem etc. de iure et de facto etc. uni dare et alteri tollereetc. prout sibi melius videbituretc. et in eventum discordie quodipsi dominiarbitripossinteligere tertiumquorumarbitrorum aut unius eorumet tertio etc. promiserunt omni laudo etc. stare etc. et non reclamare etc. nec ad arbitrium etc. sub pena etc.

Collegio dei Notari Capitolini, Vol.1519

f0733v Indictione mensis octobris dieoctava 1561. quinta In presentia etc. personaliterconstitutidominusAlexanderCorvinuset Marius Faleriusarbitrietc. electipro parte domini et Jo:Philippi de Serlupis eisdematributamin magistri Francisci de Pichis pictoris iuxta potestatem in actis mei notarii inter dictas partesfacto sub die XXVIII compromisso ut asseereunt et septembrisproximi preteriti habita etiam informatione consilio peritorum artis picture declararuntlaudarunt et pronuntiarunt dictum dominum inter ipsum et dictum Jo:Philippumfacto prius computo de pecuniisper ipsummagistrum ab ipso Franciscum magistrumFranciscum domino Jo:Philippo habitis teneri et obligatumesse ad supplendum et solvendumipsi magistroFranciscousquead summa quingentorum scutorum moneteet ad id dictumdominum omni meliori Jo:Philippumcondemnarunt modo etc. Rogantesetc. ActumRome in domomei notarii in RegionePinee etc. dominoPetropaulo Aretinoet Mauritio Cornelio presentibus flio domini testibus etc. VirgiliideRuffisromano

JOHN SHEARMAN

A
THE

drawing

for

Raphael's

'Saint

George'

introduction of an unknown drawing for Raphael's Saint George,now in Washington, may begin as a commentary on an item in the sale catalogue of Robert Udny's drawings, May 1803: 347 One ST. GEORGE, A CAPITAL PEN it made is saidforK. Henry VIII DESIGN, N.B. Fifty guineas have been refused for this drawing.' This drawing, which is published here (Fig.1), has preserved its eighteenth-century mat, on the back of which is written, in William Esdaile's hand: for the order of St George for Henry 8.th & Mr. Udny refus'd 50 gS for it.' 2 William Esdaile's monogram appears in the bottom right corner of the recto of the drawing, whereas Robert Udny's, upside down, is in the same corner of the mat. After its reappearance in the Esdaile sale, 1840, there appears to be no further published record of it, but probably it never left England; it came to the present owner by inheritance. Robert Udny, who died in 1802, acquired most of his drawings in Italy; they were purchased on his behalf by his brother John, Consul at Livorno.3 The prominent
* I am grateful, firstly, to the present owner of the drawing for his invitation to publish it, then to several colleagues who have helped in various ways: Sylvie Beguin, David Brown, Howard Burns, Lorne Campbell, Robert Koch, Andrew Robison and Timothy Stephens. London (Scott and Philipe), 4th-10th May 1803. The copy in the Liverpool Public Library is marked with prices and buyers; against No.347 is written: Thame 6.12-. 2 William Esdaile Sale, Christie's, 18th June 1840, No.62: 'St. George and the Dragon; very spirited; from Mr. Udny's Collection'; bought by Farrier. in England,London 11824], III, 3 W. BUCHANAN: Memoirsof Painting ... p.11.
1 Catalogue of the entire cabinet of Robert Udny, Esq., Part III . . .

. .. y's colln 1803 WE N 132 This drawing was made

collector's mark, like a fleur-de-lys, next to Esdaile's, is the one identified (from a drawing at Oxford, inscribed by Udny) as that of 'Ercole Lilly';4 the two drawings by Raphael in Udny's sale immediately before Saint George were said to have come from 'Sig. Lolli'. This was probably the engraver Ercole Lelli, who was Director of the Academy in Bologna from 1754. The mount, however, is inscribed in French, Raphael d'Urbin, and there is a coat-of-arms in the lower left corner which I have not identified. A much earlier owner may be proposed from a study of the verso. The drawing, when I first saw it, was glued to the mount, but traces of architectural studies on the verso were faintly visible. When the sheet was lifted, two studies for elaborate tabernacles were revealed (Fig.17), together with an inscription, between them, un bon scolarodi Raffaelle - an attempt, probably, by some subsequent Italian collector to account for their presence on the back of a drawing which bore on its rectoan attribution in a good sixteenth- or seventeenthcentury hand: Raffaello Sanctio.5 The tabernaclestudies are attributable, I think, for their vocabulary, syntax and graphic style, to Muzio degli Oddi (15691639). There is good comparative material among the several studies for doorways, tabernacles and niches in two volumes at Windsor, Disegni originali di mano di Muzio Oddida Urbino(for example, Figs 18 and 20).6

Drawings,

visible; it is very similar to Briquet 4833. Royal Library, Vols 182-3; in Vol. 182, especially Nos.9983, 9992, 10035, 10049, 10067 (fols 7, 13, 51, 63 verso,67). Muzio's interest in Raphael is expressed here by studies after Palazzo dell'Aquila (9976, fol.1) and Palazzo Bresciano (9980, fol.4, and 9989, fol. 11)
6

s When the sheet was lifted by Michael Warnes the watermark also became

Lugt 2852.

15

DRAWING

FOR

RAPHAEL'S

'SAINT

GEORGE'

turbulent career as architect in Urbino, Loreto, Milan and Lucca, and he was Professor of Mathematics at Urbino and author of mathematical works.' When he retired to Urbino in 1637 he bought Raphael's father's house, quite possibly inspired by the knowledge of some earlier family connection; for the notary dealing with the inheritance of Giovanni Santi in 1499-1500 had been Matteo degli Oddi (and of course Raphael, soon after, had enjoyed the patronage of Maddalena degli Oddi in Perugia). The alterations Muzio effected in the house are listed at length in a holograph memorandum of Ist January 1637; they include an agreement with the mason 'di fare nella stanza dove i la di Raffaello in casa mia, un pezzo di solaio'- and madonna when he wrote Raffaello it closely resembled the inof the Saint George scription on the recto drawing.s In his Will he disposed of his 'librariae studio'with care, and ordered a detailed inventory to be made of his e disegni';9 'instrumenti statuette, libri, scritture, mathematici, he wanted this material to be set aside for the use of the young artists of Urbino, and seems even to have thought at one point of some kind of academy attached to San Luca.'o It is certain, however, that the drawings he left were not all, like those at Windsor, his own, for there is another volume formerly his, now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, which is a scrapbook of over three hundred folios, each with one to three drawings stuck down to the rectos;and these drawings are the work of many different architects apart from Muzio." There is no handwriting of Muzio's in this volume to be compared with that on the Saint Georgedrawing; but he is a likely owner of the latter, and it is easy to imagine how it might have come into his hands. To return to the entry in Robert Udny's sale catalogue: the assertion that the drawing was made for Henry VIII is one which the majority of modern opinion would make about the Saint George panel in Washington (Fig.23), except that a more precise historicism has long since made Henry VII the
ANON.

and at times Muzio degli Oddi had a distinguished

recipient. This assumption about the picture has certainly on occasions been ignored in the literature on Raphael, and as often more positively refuted in preference for another in fact older tradition, that an isolated painting of this subject was painted for Duke Guidobaldo I of Urbino."2 But a more openminded scepticism begins, as is perhaps natural in the literature of a collection rather than an artist, with Fern Rusk Shapley's Catalogueof the Italian Paintingsin the National Galleryof Art.'3 As the question has a bearing not only upon the sources of Raphael's ideas, but also upon their date and interpretation, it must be briefly examined here.'4 The convention that a Saint Georgewas sent as a present to Henry VII is of long standing and grows by two distinct steps. So far as I can discover the idea of an English destination first occurred to Andr6 Felibien. The several official posts occupied by F6libien made it natural, perhaps, that he should think of the Orders of Raphael's of Chivalry when writing in the Entretiens Saint Michael and Saint of Georgethen, as panels, pair for it was in the Louvre, now, presumably on that basis that he believed the former to have been painted for Francis I, the latter for Henry VIII.'" His conclusion
12 Milan [1584], p.48 G. P. LOMAZZO: Trattatodell'artede la Pittura ..., Vatican City [1936], Raffaello nei documenti (reprinted in V. GOLZIO: ..., p.309): 'quel San Giorgio, che gia fece (Raffaello) al Duca d'Urbinosopra un Tavoliere';the other Saint Georgeand the Dragon attributed by Lomazzo to Raphael, in San Vittore in Milan, was recorded there again by FRANCISCUS

and

ANDREAS SCHOTTUS: Itinerarium nobiliorum regionum, urbium, oppidorum,

Urbino

'Muzio Oddi', Nuova rivista Misena, VI [1893], pp.195 ff.; L. SERVOLINI: VI [1932], fasc. 6, pp.7ff. Oddi architetto urbinate del Seicento', Urbinum, ' Urbino, Archivio della Biblioteca Universitaria, Busta 53, fasc. vi, Memorie de' Censi, e d'Altri Conti (1630-38). This is perhaps the earliest recorded attribution of the fresco Madonna to Raphael. The history of Giovanni Santi's house is very complex, and much better sense could be made of it by a study of these documents. There is considerable earlier and
in L. PUNGILEONI:Elogio storico di Raffaello Santi da later documentation 'Cenno storico sulla Urbino, Urbino [1829], pp.271-73, and G. BARDOVAGNI:

(Padre CARLO GROSSI): Commentario degli uominiillustri di Urbino, Muzio [1819], p.227; A. VERNARECCI:'Nuovi documenti intorno

dell'arteitaliana, VI casa paterna di Raffaello Sanzio', Rassegnabibliografica was still called the 'sala [1903], pp.97 ff. The room with the fresco Madonna degli Oddi' in 1703, and Muzio's collection (or part of it) of mathematical instruments and pictures was still in the house. in n.8, Busta 42, fasc. 5, No.57, Copia della particoladel 9 Archivio cited alla sua librariae studio;the division of del sign. Muzio Oddi intorno testamento the rest of his property between the families of his sisters is described in Busta 53, fasc. vii, fols.65 ff. 10 L. SERVOLINI: 'II Manoscritto Antaldo Antaldi sugli artisti marchigiani', Urbinum op.cit. in n.8, p.272 n. [1936], fasc. 1-6, p. 15; PUNGILEONI, " Biblioteca Laurenziana, Cod. Ashburnham, App. 1828; I follow the identification by H. BURNS: 'Progetti di Francesco di Giorgio per i conventi (Atti del di San Bernardino e Santa Chiara di Urbino', Studi Bramanteschi Congressointernazionale,Milan-Urbino-Rome, 1970), Rome [1974], p.296; Design, 49, Nos.5-6, and, idem: 'A drawing by L. B. Alberti', Architectural pp.45ff.

et locorumItaliae (first ed. [1600]), Vicenza [1610], Part I, p.127 (they probably follow Lomazzo, but write as if they had been to the church). c. H. CLOUGH: 'The Relations between the English and Urbino Courts, 1474XIV [1967], p.202, has stated that the Saint 1508', Studiesin the Renaissance, Georgein Washington was painted for 'Duke Guidobaldo's own collection', in the Louvre was given by the Duke to Henry VII, and that the Saint George It is sometimes stated that Lomazzo described a copy; he did not. The was painted continuity of the tradition beginning here, that a Saint George for the Duke of Urbino, is to be traced through to the annotation of the Raffael und Siena [1792] edition of Vasari's Vite, V, p.247. A. SPRINGER: Michelangelo,Leipzig [1878], II, p.499, still said that the Washington Saint George, then in the Hermitage, was painted for the Duke of Urbino, the Paris [1881], Louvre diptych not. On the other hand E. MiNTZ: Rapha'l, pp.117, 226, was sure that the diptych had been painted for Guidobaldo, the Hermitage picture for Henry VII. Mention should be made of another claim for the provenance of the Washington Saint George,made only by Snr and Jnr: An accountof the Statues, English writers; J. RICHARDSON, London Bas-reliefs, Drawings and Picturesin Italy, France, &c. with Remarks, [1754], p.14 (first ed.[1722]) stated, presumably thinking of Vorsterman's engraving of 1627, that it was 'done for an Ancestor of my Lord Pembroke'. VERTUE Somewhat the same idea was noted by GEORGE (quoted by F. R. SHAPLEY:National Gallery of Art: Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, Washington [1979], p.393, n.4): that it had been given by Castiglione to an early Lord Pembroke. 13 op. cit. in n. 12, pp.391ff. 14 Accepting the assumption that the Washington Saint George was commissioned by Guidobaldo to be sent to Henry VII implies a date for the commission in the Spring of 1505: J. SHEARMAN: 'Raphael at the Court of BURLINGTON CXII [1970], p.77, n.23. MAGAZINE, Urbino', THE desplus excellens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages Entretiens peintres is A. FELIBIEN: sur bois (first ed. [1685]), Trevoux [1725], p.333: 'fly a deuxpetitstableaux un Saint Michel qu'il fit pour qui sont de sa premieremanitre: l'un represente Franfois I. & l'autre un Saint George qu'il peignit pour Henri VIII. Roi d'Angleterre'; he mentions separately (p.337) the Saint George in the collection of the Marquis de Sourdis - that is, the Washington picture which he knew came from the King of England (Charles I). I would still argue (as in loc. cit. in n.14) that the Louvre diptych is likely to have been ordered by Giovanna della Rovere, whose father and brother (Guidobaldo) had been invested with the Order of the Garter, her husband and son with the Ordre de Saint-Michel. The provenance of the Louvre diptych is secure from the point when it passed from Mazarin's collection (see n. 16) to that of Louis XIV; earlier it seems to have been owned by Conte Ascanio Sforza Le rime,Milan [1587], p.181, of two (see the description, in G. P. LOMAZZO: pictures copied by Pietro Martir Stresi).

16

DRAWING

FOR

RAPHAEL'S

'SAINT

GEORGE'

is all the more striking since the diptych (as it then was) had recently been acquired from the Mazarin Collection with the reputation that it had been painted in 1504 for the Duke of Urbino.'6 Fdlibien's theory, which had the neatness of symmetry even if it was an odd way of interpreting a diptych or libretto,"7 was Le when Florent confused immediately repeated by Comte in 1699 with the additional observation that the Louvre Saint George, painted for Henry VIII, was engraved while in the Pembroke Collection;"sthe print by Lucas Vorsterman (1627) is of course after the Washington picture. This muddle was resolved by Frangois Bernard Lepicie (1754), who said that was the one now in WashingHenry 9 VIII's picture ton; and that conclusion, solidified as a tradition, is the one on which Robert Udny's catalogue-entry, and several later texts, rest.20 The second step was taken, I think, by J. D. Passavant, who asked himself how the Saint George (by then in the Hermitage) arrived in England;21and he read the recently-published account by Bernardino Baldi of Castiglione's mission on behalf of Guidobaldo to Henry VII, to respond to the King's investiture of the Duke with the Order of the Garter, where it was said that Castiglione had been sent with 'alcunigrandie generosicorsieri,confalconi, ed altri presentinobili'.22 The it was said (but not by Baldi, nor any other Saint George, early source), was among these presenti;and that has been assumed to be a fact by many subsequent writers, including myself.23 The literary tradition traced here must suggest, on the contrary, that the 'fact' was created by taking thought, not always advisedly. Was it, nevertheless, a correct intuition?
16

The provenance of the Washington Saint George can be traced back with confidence to the moment when Charles I acquired it by exchange from the Earl of Pembroke; it was in the latter's collection when engraved in 1627. That it does not appear in the inventories of Henry VIII is worth little, because those inventories do not account for all the royal palaces. It seems more difficult to account for good Italian copies, such as the one in the Pinacoteca at Spoleto, and for clear reflections of the Saint Georgein Italian sixteenth-century art, if the picture had been dispatched to England.24 An early reflection of Raphael's design appears in a small fresco by Lotto over the apse of San Giorgio at Credaro; there are some very precise recollections - of the horse's trappings, for example - but

the colours are quite different and Lotto may have known a preliminary drawing in which Saint George held a shield (to be discussed below)."2 A less easily explained imitation is Battista Dossi's large Saint George of 1540 now in Dresden, where the references to Raphael's are numerous and very precise (to the inclusion of the garter, for example).26 That example prompts a suggestion: that the Earl of Pembroke's picture had previously been in Ferrara, and was the Bastianino in the Duchess's chapel 'in corte'at Ferrara in 1586 - a picture which does not reappear, I think, in the documentation of the subsequent dispersal of the Ferrarese collection.27 It is known that Isabella d'Este had the opportunity to acquire treasures of the Della Rovere during their long exile form Urbino, 1516did the same. 23;28 perhaps the d'Este in Ferrara The probability, in any case, that the Saint George remained in Italy rather than being sent to England, removes one possible way of interpreting the relationship between the painting and the images of Saint George and the Dragon found in the regalia of the Order of the Garter, particularly the pendants known as the Great George and Lesser George. It is uncertain, in fact unlikely, that the regalia had taken definitive form in the reign of Henry VII. However, the legation to Emperor Maximilian in 1502 'shewed unto thaim of a George whiche every Companion of that Ordre shold were And also a colar the patron (drawing?) wherof we shewed unto thaim according to our instructions'.29
And the instructions for the investiture of Guidobaldo in 1504 list the garter, the purple gown, the blue mantle and a George: 'Imaginem gloriosissimi martiris 'quadro . .. uno Sto Giorgio di Rafaello da Orbino'set up by

GABRIEL-JULES,

COMTE DE COSNAC: Les richesses du Palais Mazarin, Paris

[1884], p.330. "7 In the 1661 Mazarin inventory (cit. in n.16): 'Un autrequi sefermeen deux en forme de couverture de cuir . .. la dictefermeture ornie de quelques ornemens d'argentet de cuivre' (they had been separated by 1695). Such works were known in Italy as libretti, libricini, or libri; see, for example, A. ALLORI: Ricordi,ed. I. Supino, Florence [1908], p.21. 18 FLORENT LE COMTE: Cabinetdes singularitez d'architecture, peinture,sculpture Paris [1699], II, p.64. etgraveure,
19

F. B. LEPICIE:Catologue raisonn des tableaux du Roi ... , Paris [1754], p.91.

20

For example the tradition enters the monographs through a footnote Milan [1829], p.38, where (referring
now in a contorno in c. P. LANDON: Annales du Musie) the picture

to his edition of QUATREMERE added by F. LONGHENA DE QUINCY:Istoria della

vita e delleoperedi RaffaelloSanzio . ..

to QUATREMERE DE QUINCY himself,

Washington, or one like it, was said to have been painted for Henry VIII.
in Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de

Raphal, Paris [1824], had said that both paintings of Saint George (and the Saint Michael)were painted for Guidobaldo. 21 J. D. PASSAVANT:Rafael von Urbinound sein VaterGiovanniSanti, Leipzig [1839], I, pp.109-10; PASSAVANT'S richly-earned authority must account for the persistence of his version of events, but it was reinforced by the no less [1851], II, pp.223, 448 (the cautious phrase 'in all probability' being knew the date of Castiglione's embassy, generally overlooked). PASSAVANT July 1506, and attached it to the picture; a correction, based on the same
fundamental impressive assent of j. DENNISTOUN:Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, London

heiliger Georg in St. Petersbourg', Jahrbuch der kiniglich preuszischen II [1881], pp.254ff. He pointed out that Castiglione's Kunstsammlungen journey was delayed by illness, and that the commission should have been given earlier, between September 1504 and, at the latest, March 1505. 22 B. BALDI: Vitae fatti di Guidobaldo I da Montefeltro, Duca d'Urbino,Milan [1821], II, p. 190. For the Duke's investiture with the Order see CLOUGH, op. in cit. n.12, pp.206-07. 23 I should now wish to withdraw the interpretation of the Torre delle Milizie, in the background of Raphael's painting, as a compliment to Henry VII ('Raphael, Rome, and the Codex Escurialensis', MasterDrawings,XV [1977], pp.132-33), and leave the alternative, that it stands as an emblem of the Miles christianus.

assumptions,

was

offered

by

A. SCHMARSOW:'Raphael's

Detti, has a different landscape and looks Lombard to me; there is an accurate replica of excellent quality, apparently sixteenth-century Italian, in a private collection in London. 25 Reproduced in P. BIANCONI: Tutta la pitturadi Lorenzo Lotto,Milan [1955], II, Fig.94b. 26 F.L. GIBBONS: Dosso and Battista Dossi, Princeton [1968], p.237 and Fig. 150. 27 A. VENTURI: 'Quadri in una cappella estense nel 1586', Archiviostorico dell'arte, I [1888], pp.425-26; he warns that some attributions on this list may be unreliable. The Duchess in question would be Margherita Gonzaga, Alfonso's third wife. His sister Lucrezia had been married briefly to Francesco Maria II of Urbino, but is unlikely to have returned to Ferrara with presents. 28 GOLZIO, op. cit. in n.12, p.50. 29 J. ANSTIS: TheRegister ... calledTheBlack of theMostNobleOrder of theGarter Book, London [1724], I, p.85n.

24 The Spoleto copy (Pinacoteca No.31), from the collection of Cesare

17

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'SAINT

GEORGE'

No pendant of this Georgii . . . in collo tuo deferes'.30 date and one of the earliest of survives, very early which there is some visual record must be Sir Henry Guildford's Great George, recorded in Holbein's portrait at Windsor, probably of 1527 (Sir Henry was made Knight of the Garter in 1526). That Guidobaldo's Imago Georgiiwas similar in design is suggested by the appearance of the same pattern (with the addition of a cape billowing behind the rider) on a silver coin of his successor, Duke Francesco Maria I, minted before 1516.31 At this point it is imperative to recall that the traditions of representing Saint George and the dragon are exceptionally rich, and what passes for similarity in other cases will not do here.32 The type with the horse in profile to the right, rearing over the dragon (as in Sir Henry's pendant) is certainly well established in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century; it has been suggested, probably wrongly, that a lost Saint Georgeby Jan van Eyck was of this type.33 Some details which seem, in this context, unusual in Sir Henry Guildford's Great George are the straight legs of the rider, braced against the stirrups, a true lancethrust with right elbow raised but hand down (a spearthrust with hand raised is much more common), and the curling of the dragon's tail around the horse's rear legs, the lance entering the dragon's mouth. In most details this pattern exists already in the Boucicaut Hours.34 In all these and other respects the pendant is similar in design to a drawing by Perino del Vaga at Budapest (Fig. 15)." Perino's drawing, however,

deserves consideration as a copy of an early stage in the The armour is similar design of Raphael's Saint George. to that eventually shown in the painting, save for the helmet, and it may be noticed that the saddle is complete, as in studies which are securely Raphael's, whereas that in the picture is not. The rather surprisingly mature and solid anatomy of the horse arises from study of the Battle of Anghiari(it is the right-hand horse of the Battle of the Standard group, reversed); and from Leonardo's mural, not its cartoon, comes the distinctive helmet with crouching, winged dragon.36It is a little bizarre that the dragon on the helmet seems to menace the one on the ground. The raised wing of the latter, between the forelegs of the horse, closes the design in a sculpturally satisfactory manner. The character of design overall is not much like Perino's own, but he may have exercised his invention in the trappings of the horse, and his fantasy in the barelyindicated plumes on its head."3 The hypothesis that the Budapest drawing is a copy of a lost design by Raphael is much strengthened, it seems to me, by a very similar drawing, probably also by Perino, at Stockholm (Fig.13); I owe my knowledge of this latter to Bernice Davidson, who suggested that I should publish her discovery.38The rider is the same, save for one detail of his armour, and he wears once more the dragon-helmet and billowing cape. The horse has been changed through the turning of its head, so that it recalls different Leonardesque models, falling in the reverse direction, towards us." The compositional type is still essentially that of the Great George, with the dragon's tail coiled round the horse's rear legs, and the overall design pyramidal. In the background the princess watches from the steps of a palace. This drawing gives the impression of being a more faithful record of the graphic style of a lost study by Raphael, above all in the schematic rendering of the background.
and the dragon - anatomically the same monster - is

DENNISTOUN, op. cit. in n.21, II, pp.443-44; the investiture took place in Rome on 22nd May 1504. 3' There is a Tudor, reproduction of the detail of the Holbein in o. MILLAR: Stuart and Early GeorgianPictures in the Royal Collection,London [1963], P1.18. The coin is reproduced in P. LITLA: Celebri famiglie italiane, dispensa Laws & TheInstitution, ASHMOLE: 151 [1866], pl. II. No.7. According to ELIAS Ceremonies of the Most Noble Orderof the Garter,London [1672], pp.220ff., 'The Earliest Dress and Insignia of the Knights of the and J. L. NEVINSON: Garter', Apollo, XLVII [1948], p.83, there should be a pendant George below the Collar on the monument of Sir Giles Daubeney, c.1508, in Westminster Abbey, but I could not see it. The distinction between the Great George and Lesser George was not established by statute before the reign of Henry VIII, but those statutes codified the practice of Henry VII (ASHMOLE, loc. cit.); the Great George is a pendant to a collar of Garters, and it should show 'the image of St. George arm'd Sitting on Horseback, who having thrown the Dragon on his back encounters him with a Tilting Spear'; the Lesser George hangs usually from a ribband, and shows, enclosed in a Garter, the rider with drawn sword. ASHMOLE'S engraved plate shows the former turned to the right (like Sir Henry Guildford's), the latter to the left. 32 There are partial surveys of the material in: o. VON TAUBE VON DER ISSEN: Die Darstellungdes heiligenGeorgin der italienischen Kunst, Halle [1910]; w. F. mit VOLBACH:Der hlg. Georg: bildliche Darstellung in Stiddeutschland der norddeutschen Typen bis zur Renaissance, Strasbourg Bernicksichtigung Sankt Georg: Legende, Verehrung, Symbol, [1917]; s. BRAUNFELS-ESCHE: Munich [1976]. 33 One could, it seems, see the reflection of the dragon in the armour of the saint's left leg (R. WEISS: 'Jan van Eyck and the Italians', Italian Studies,XI [1956], pp.1 1-12). The picture was acquired in Bruges in the Spring of 1444, for presentation to Alfonso V of Aragon; it had arrived in Naples by June 1445. 34 Fol.23 verso; M. MEISS: FrenchPainting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The BoucicautMaster, London [1968], P1.10. The engraving by the Master E.S., L.146, is similar. More exact precedents for the Great George type are op. cit. in n.32, Pls. IIb, IIIc, Vc (stained-glass and reproduced by VOLBACH, op.cit. in n.32, Fig.80 (a banner). relief-sculpture), and BRAUNFELS-ESCHE, 3' Raffaello Emlikkidllitis, Szepmiiveszeti Muizeum [1970], No.41. The drawing should perhaps be dated in the later 1520s, since in graphic style it resembles Perino's studies for Palazzo Doria in Genoa.
30

da "6 Most clearly seen in the ex-Doria copy, repr. C. PEDRETrI: Leonardo Vinci inedito, Florence [1968], Fig.68. The helmet-type has a complicated history; in Italy it may be found in copies of the lost bronze relief by Verrocchio of Alexander (or Scipio); rather surprisingly it is found much from the Van Beuningen earlier in the Eyckian ThreeMaries at the Sepulchre Collection. In this detail and others the Budapest drawing, if it is a copy after Raphael, is another illustration of the way in which he never wastes an of idea; he recalled the design, I believe, when working on the Expulsion Heliodorus, probably in 1511. 37 The radial crupper over the horse's rump, however, was probably part of Raphael's design; such harness may be found, for example, in the Saint Georgepanel in the altar-piece attributed to Margalde Sas in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes in Palazzo Medici. 38 Stockholm, National Museum, 297/1863, attributed to G. F. Penni. On de Crozat. the mount is an early title RAFAELLO,and the inscription Cabinet I have not seen this drawing, but I am convinced from the photograph by Miss Davidson's attribution to Perino (earlier, I would suggest, than the drawing in Budapest). 39 It is unlikely that we have records of all Leonardo's horse-studies, and it may be wrong to insist on particular sources; poses similar to this one are found in the engraving after four models for the Sforza horse (repr. L. H. HEYDENREICH: Leonardoda Vinci, New York [1954], II, Fig.94), and in studies for a subsidiary group in the Battle of Anghiari(Windsor 12339 - in fact the horse immediately to the right of the one copied by Raphael, c. 1505, in a drawing at Oxford: K. T. PARKER: of of the Collection Catalogue Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, II: Italian Schools, Oxford [1956], No.535).

18

14. Sheet with St George and the dragon and reclining figures, by Perino del Vaga after Raphael. Pen and brown ink, 22.5 by 28.9 cm. (Uffizi, Florence).

13. St Georgeand the dragon,by Perino del Vaga, probably after Raphael. Pen and brown ink, 26.1 by 19.9 cm. (National museum, Stockholm).

16. St George an drawing, pen 21.4 cm. (Uffiz

15. St Georgeand the dragon,by Perino del Vaga, probably after Raphael. Pen and brown ink, 21.4 by 26 cm. (Szepmiiveszeti MUizeum, Budapest).

17. Studies as here attributed to Muziodegli Oddi. Blackchalk,pen and brownink, 25 by 35.5 cm. Verso of drawingreproduced for tabernacles, collection, Fig.1. (Private England).

..:.8... .. ::::::
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19. St George and the Dragon,by Martin Schongauer. Engraving, diameter 8.5 cm.

18. Studyfor a tabernacle, by Muzio degli Oddi. Pen and ink, 20 by 13.5 cm. (Vol.182, Fol.7r, Royal Library, Windsor). Reproducedby theQueen. Gracious Permission of HerMajesty

20. Study for a tabernacle, by Muzio degli Oddi. Black chalk, 25.5 by 20.4 cm. (Vo1.182, Fol.13r, Royal Library, MajestytheQueen.

Permission of Her Windsor). Reproduced by Gracious

DRAWING

FOR

RAPHAEL'S

'SAINT

GEORGE'

Perino del Vaga was heir to much of Raphael's legacy of drawings,4 but it would be silly, of course, to insist that the Budapest and Stockholm drawings reproduce Raphael's first thoughts, inspired by part of the regalia received by Guidobaldo. If it were so, however, it would be easy to understand why Raphael, and perhaps Guidobaldo, so radically changed their minds, and drew upon other traditions; the Garter itself, which is worn on the left leg, could not be visible with the horse facing right. The first known design in the reverse direction is represented by a severelydamaged, almost illegible, silverpoint-drawing in the Ashmolean Museum (Fig.22);41 assessment of this drawing is bedevilled by its reduction to the silhouette of horse and rider, even those incomplete, and this cut-out is pasted at the wrong angle on its modern mount. The drawing in Oxford does not seem to have been taken seriously for a hundred years.42Something very like it, however, was again recorded by Perino in a drawing in Florence (Fig.14).43 At this stage in the work, possibly the first with the horse moving to the left, the rider bore an oval shield on his left arm, and struck the dragon with a sword raised in his right hand. In Perino's version the saint seems to wear a complex helmet all' antica;in the Oxford silverpoint the helmet has been cut around a simple, circular profile, and any embellishment would have been lost just as the sword was. The saint's all' antica armour and the posture of the dragon in Perino's drawing may be figments as much of his imagination as of his memory. Nevertheless his record, and the Oxford drawing, together bear witness to a moment in Raphael's thinking when he was inspired by a tradition best represented by Schongauer's early engraving (Fig.19); the connection should be stated in this cautious manner because Schongauer himself drew upon a pictorial tradition."4

Raphael took from this tradition the leaping, rather than rearing, action of the horse, seen from behind, and the raised arm wielding a sword rather than a lance; that choice of weapon was also, of course, a reversion to his earlier Saint George,paired with Saint Michael, now in the Louvre, and it may have been suggested by a Garter-pendant of the kind known as the Lesser George. At this stage in the design Raphael conflated - with rather curious results, it seems to me - ideas of a leaping horse like Schongauer's with others of a rearing horse drawn from Florentine sculpture. The full-tilt and, as it were, committed leap of Schongauer's horse makes sense because the horse is looking where it is going. The rearing horse in Donatello's relief beneath his Saint George on Or San Michele, poised on one spot in something like a levade,no less naturally turns its head to one side. In fact the front part of Raphael's horse, even in the eventual painting, looks as if it had been re-drawn from one of the models made each by Leonardo when studying the Battle of Anghiari; of the models known now, from later bronze casts in Budapest, London and New York, shows a rearing horse with turned head and'rather extravagantly extended forelegs.45 What seems very unnatural, in Raphael's horse, is a movement at the front like Leonardo's propelled by one at the rear like In the drawing at Oxford Saint George rides with the straight leg braced against the stirrup, a feature which persists through all known stages of the design; it might be better related functionally, as we have seen, to a thrust with a lance than to a swing with a sword. The combination adopted here - perhaps drawn on the one hand from Schongauer, on the other from an earlier design by Raphael similar to Sir Henry Guildford's pendant - this combination does in fact take the artist back almost to the posture of the swordbearing saint in the earlier panel in the Louvre. It is less fluent, however; and its awkwardness is resolved in Robert Udny's drawing (Fig.1). The definitive posture reached here is at first derived from the long tradition
Schongauer's.46

JACOPO STRADA said that he had acquired 'two boxes' full of drawings by Raphael and Perino from the latter's widow in Rome: see his preface, Alli di SebastianoSerlio Lettori, to his edition of 11 settimo libro d'architettura ... ,Frankfurt - am - Main [1575]. Bolognese 41 Its white heightening is in part oxidised. PARKER, op. cit. in n.39, No.44. There is an impeccable entry in J. C. ROBINSON: A CriticalAccountof the Drawings by Michel Angelo and Raffaello in the UniversityGalleries, Oxford, Oxford [1870], p.151, No.35; but PASSAVANT, op. cit. in n.21, III [1858], The Works p.253, described the medium as sepia wash, and C. RULAND: of in The Raphael Collection in the Royal Raphael Santi da Urbino as represented Libraryat WindsorCastle, unpublished proof (1868), p.102, Weimar edition [1876], P.111, has pen and ink, as does w. L.OBKE: RafaelsLebenund Werke,

40

Leipzig

[1875],

Raphael.7his Life and Works, London [1882], I, pp.278-79 still take the drawing to be a preparatory study; it was omitted, presumably consciously,
by o. FISCHEL: Raphaels Zeichnungen: Versuch einer Kritik . . . , Strassburg

p.134.

LUBKE and J. A. CROWEand G. B. CAVALCASELLE:

45 The one in a private collection in London, which the owner has kindly allowed me to study, is remarkably similar in three-dimensional design; there is aview from almost the appropriate angle in P.JEANNERAT: 'A newly discovered statuette by Leonardo da Vinci', Apollo,XIX [1934], p.314. 46 Leonardo made a number of studies for a Saint George on Windsor

12331

[1898]. 'Nouveaux dessins de Signorelli', Gazettedes Beaux-Arts, 6e P6r., X [1933], pp.279-80, and Fig.1 (also The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, second ed., Chicago [1938], I, pp.39-40, III, Fig.117), adopted a in n.39, retained this attribution, but clearly did not believe a word of the argument. The present state of the drawing reduces any attribution to an act of faith; I have no doubt that it represents a design of Raphael's, and I can see no reason to deny the traditional attribution. 43 Uffizi 559E; pen and ink, 225 by 289 mm.; B. DAVIDSON: Mostra di disegni di Perinodel Vagae la suacerchia, Florence [1966], No.23. 44 See, for example, a miniature from a book of hours of c.1430-35, John
Carter Brown suggestion from 0. FISCHELthat the study was by Signorelli; PARKER, loc. cit.
42 B. BERENSON:

commission.

P1.86); this drawing is usually, and I feel sure rightly, dated c.1510 or later. One of the studies is remarkably like the Oxford silverpoint drawing, in the view and posture of the horse and the action of the rider; but the turn of the horse's head is towards the dragon, rather than the spectator, and thus seems quite natural. Leonardo's drawing is similar enough to raise the question whether he, too, knew Raphael's drawings; I think it is much less likely that Raphael was following some lost design for a Saint Georgeby Leonardo. However there is one anatomical eccentricity in the dragon recorded in Perino's drawing in Budapest, its unicorn-head, which is prefigured in a drawing of dragons by Leonardo, Windsor 12370 recto (POPHAM,op. cit., P1.62), which is surely much earlier than Raphael's
And A. E. POPHAM: 'The Dragon-Fight', Leonardo: Saggi e

(A. E. POPHAM: The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, London

[1946],

NetherlandishPainting, Cambridge, Mass. [1953], II, Fig.193. A similar design, but with the saint using a lance, appears in the background of in the Louvre. Memling's DiptychofJeande Celier

Library,

Providence,

R.I.,

repr.

E. PANOFSKY: Early

ricerche, ed. A. Marazza, Rome [1954], pp.223ff., collected Leonardo's studies for a battle between horsemen and a dragon, among which some already show, c. 1480, a leaping horse with head turned back; although the effect is not very similar, it seems possible that Raphael knew some such drawing which gave him licence for the definitive posture in his Saint George.The connection between Raphael's horse and Leonardo's drawings
was discussed by VONTAUBEVONDERISSEN,op. cit. in n.32, pp.94-95.

21

DRAWING

FOR.

RAPHAEL'S

'SAINT

GEORGE'

in which a lance or spear (much more frequently the latter) is directed at the dragon's mouth; we know that Jan van Eyck's lost picture included this detail.47 Perino's drawings in Stockholm and Budapest (Figs 13 and 15) suggest that Raphael in fact reverts to some of his first thoughts for this picture. Then in a swift improvisation he redirected the lance to the dragon's shoulder, an idea so rare in the visual tradition that its occurrence in Donatello's relief seems to confirm that that work was constantly in Raphael's mind. The pen-drawing from Udny's collection is in excellent condition and one may see that it is full of improvisations, though none as radical as the redirection of the lance. Variations between faint black-chalk underdrawing and the pen-stroke indicate particularly important decisions taken on this sheet in the areas round the rear legs of the horse, its left fore-leg, the profile of its chest, and the dragon's head (Fig.21); the vigorous coil of the dragon's tail, preserved in all subsequent stages of the design, was invented here after the pen-drawing had been begun (and it was first drawn in chalk much shorter, dog-like, without the loop). The line of the horse's stomach was initially drawn appreciably lower, tangential to the loop in the dragon's tail; that relationship is restored in the final design (Fig.23), by making the group more compact. The reinforcement of the very faint underdrawing of the rocky cave on the left has barely been begun in pen,
and - save for a few trees in the centre - the rest of the

landscape has not been started.48The rock to which the dragon is pinned is loosely begun in pen on the left; its continuation in chalk, on the right, hides from view, at this stage, the lower part of the nearer hind-leg. Different degrees of completion in pen are evident throughout the main group: the dragon's fore-leg given as much thought as the horse's chest and hindlegs, or the rider's elbows, but the horse's head and the rider's armour incomplete, the flying cape barely begun. Why was this study abandoned? The answer to this question must lie in the purpose for which the drawing was made. In the Udny drawing the pyramidal group has exactly the dimensions of that in the finished picture; a vertical chalk-line is drawn down the left side precisely where the margin of the picture will be. Raphael had been accustomed, since
about 1503, to use such pen-drawings as cartoons for his smaller paintings.49 And at a certain point he must

have stood back from this one and seen that it would not do: the proportions of the horse were irretrievably wrong, perhaps as a result of the different artistic origins of front and rear. He therefore began again and produced the well-known study in the Uffizi (Fig.16), the somewhat mechanical appearance of which is due in large part to the pricking of all significant outlines for transfer by pouncing to the panel but in some degree also to a real loss of immediacy as a result of repetition."s It is instructive to watch, for example, how the tension in the extended rear leg of the dragon in the Udny drawing, relaxed in the cartoon, is restored in the painting. The refinement of the invention is by no means finished, however, in the cartoon. Some significant changes are made in the armour. The shoulder-plate (pauldron) shown in the Udny drawing has a complex scalloped profile, as in the Budapest and Stockholm drawings, and as in Schongauer's print; the simplified form in the cartoon is a step towards the rounded shape in the picture. In both Raphael's pen-drawings there is an awkward relationship between the chainmail skirt and the saddle, which is resolved in the painting by the saddle's omission (unless it is hidden under the chain-mail). In the two drawings the plates (tassets) protecting the pelvis are suspended from a complicated overlapping structure of four tace-plates which seems to be pushed upwards by the saddle; in the painting the plates hang from a simplified sequence of pelvic rings like those visible in the copy at Stockholm, and the longest plate is pulled around the thigh where it belongs. In neither drawing is the armour structurally explicit in all details; this is especially clear in the upper arm. In both drawings the Garter is carefully described, but there is no sword in either. A small detail in these drawings, but a significant one, lies in the characterisation of the dragon's ferocious snarl. The wrinkling along the nose shown in the Udny drawing (Fig.21), like that of a very angry dog, is repeated in the pen-work of the Uffizi cartoon; but the pricking of the latter already selects the muscles stretched taut along the nose like those one sees in the painting. The cartoon, rather surprisingly, was not the final drawing. In the Coronationof the Virgin painted c.1503
for Perugia, probably Raphael's first work for an important artistic centre, he took, as is well known, an extra step after the cartoon; he made elaborate head studies. In this case he seems to have felt the necessity of studying the pattern of light and shade in the whole composition more carefully than the pen-drawings would allow. A severely damaged and not entirely

in n.33. A miniature from a book of hours by a follower of the Boucicaut Master, in the Waiters Art Gallery at Baltimore, is a good example of this type, with the horse leaping to the left and an authentic lance-thrust to the dragon's mouth (R.H.RANDALL: 'Jan van Eyck and the St Art Gallery,XXXIX [1981], p.43); George Ivories', TheJournalof the Walters another is reproduced by PANOFSKY, op.cit. in. n.44, Fig. 194. 48 The shorthand used for the distant trees is especially similar to that in a op. cit. in n.39, No.34), connected with landscape-sketch in Oxford (PARKER, the Colonna Altarpiece, c.1505, and recently published by s. FERINOPAGDEN:'Raphael's activity in Perugia reflected in a drawing in the Institutesin des kunsthistorischen Ashmolean Museum, Oxford', Mitteilungen Florenz, XXV [1981], p.233; such idiosyncratic pen-work is also to be found in a study in the Louvre for a MadonnaReading(R.Z.43) and one in the Madonna Uffizi for the Esterha~y (R.Z. 126), c. 1504 and c. 1506 respectively. in 49 Earlier pen-drawings which served as cartoons are the Annunciation the Louvre, c.1503 (R.Z.28), the Knight'sDream in the National Gallery, in the Uffizi, for the Louvre London, c.1504 (R.Z.40), and the Saint George painting, c. 1504 (R.Z.57).
47 WEISS, loc. ct.

so Uffizi, 529E; R.Z.78. The purpose of the drawing was perhaps first recognised by J. RICHARDSON Jnr, op. cit. in n.12, p.63. A study of the black-chalk underdrawing helps to confirm the prior place of the Udny drawing, for it is most vigorous in areas not studied in the latter: the lower part of the cave, the princess, and the ground beneath her. Particular preoccupations are the positions of the horse's rear feet, its fore-legs and chest, and there is further study of its head, which ends up shortened (it will be shortened still more in the painting). There is a significant lack of hesitation where satisfactory solutions had been found on the Udny sheet, as in the horse's and dragon's tails.

22

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21. Detail from Fig. 1, by Raphael. 20.5 by 14.3 cm.

22. St Georgeand the dragon,here attributed to Raphael. Silverpoint with down on paper, 26.4 by 23.3 cm. (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

23. St Georgeand the dragon,by Raphael. Panel, 28.5 by 21.5 cm. (Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.).

24. DetailfromFig.23.

DRAWING

FOR

RAPHAEL'S

'SAINT

GEORGE'

legible drawing recently acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington is probably the ruin of an original by Raphael;s' the medium is bistre wash with white heightening, over black chalk. It is not, as one might have expected, traced or pounced from the cartoon, but drawn again freehand as is clear from the shifted relationship of the dragon's head and wing, the lance, and the horse's fore-leg. An ambiguity in the pen-drawings, as to whether the dragon's wing is between the horse's fore-legs, as in the Budapest design, or outside, as in the painting, is here clarified by choosing the former solution. Another respect in which the Washington drawing recalls earlier ideas is in the treatment of the helmet, which is of flatter shape and has three prominent feathers; they resemble not in so much the extravagant plumes of the Saint George the Louvre diptych as the feathered helmet in Schongauer's engraving (Fig.19), and countless earlier Saint Georges in Gothic art. But the Washington drawing is nevertheless likely to follow both the pendrawings (and the silverpoint in Oxford); the coil of the dragon's tail which was invented on the Udny sheet is repeated here and the sword now appears, suspended. exactly as in the painting except that it is nearly vertical: more like Schongauer's, in fact. It may be that we have evidence of six stages in the preparation of the Washington Saint George; we certainly know of four. The case-study suggests a much more painstaking approach to the invention of small works than has been apparent hitherto. Yet the case would probably be misleading if it were supposed to be typical. Throughout his life Raphael shifted his focus, pragmatically, on problems as they came up, and it is a mistake to assume a consistency in preparatory technique; in particular he would devote special attention to works which were critical to the furtherance of his career. Whether or not the Washington was intended to be sent to Henry VII it was Saint George almost certainly commissioned by Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino. It had to be right. And to that end the refining process continued after the drawings, or at least after any we have. There were details of the armour and of the horse's harness still to be resolved, and above all the landscape was to receive much greater care. A radiograph shows a consistent growth
in the weight in the trees on the right compared with those sketched in the cartoon;52 their number is increased and their spacing clarified, so that finally they stand like the columns of the portico of the Pantheon. The style and quality of the landscape painting leaves no doubt, I think, that Raphael was inspired by one work of Memling's, the diptych now divided between Munich (Saint John the Evangelist) and

The connection is apparent Washington (St Veronica).53 whether one looks at foreground plants or middleground trees and rocks - Raphael's touch, even, is precisely imitative; but it is apparent above all in the treatment of the extreme distance, where white buildings stand behind rounded trees which cast long shadows on the grass. The diptych, in the first years of the century, was the property of Bernardo Bembo, and during the latter's tour of duty (1502-03) as Podestat of Verona it was lent by his son Carlo to Isabella d'Este."s Perhaps Raphael travelled to Mantua, or Venice, and saw it there, but more probably he did not need to. Bernardo Bembo was the senior member of the Venetian embassy to Julius II which was entertained at Urbino in April 1505 by Guidobaldo's Duchess Elisabetta (he, Memling's panels are almost exactly the size of Raphael's - are designed, it is often assumed, to be portable. If Raphael's study of the diptych did come about in the way suggested here, the implied date for at the earliest in the summer of 1505, is his Saint George, a little later than the one that would most naturally have been deduced from the hypothesis that Castiglione was to take it to Henry VII.s5 I think it is in general true that Raphael's undated works of the period before 1508 have recently been placed rather earlier than they should have been.
54 The most recent and most thorough treatment of this problem is by L.

himself, was then in Rome)."' Such minuscule works -

'Notes on Netherlandish pictures in the Veneto in the fifteenth CAMPBELL:

and sixteenth centuries', THEBURLINGTON CXXIII[1981], p.471. MAGAZINE, 55 M. SANUTO: I Dianii, ed. Venice [1881], VI, cols.l51, 156, and F. MADIAI:

'Diario delle cose di Urbino', Archivio storico per le March e per l'Umbria,III 'Un tableau perdu de Lorenzo Costa', Pantheon, [1886], p.455. C. M.BROWN: XXXIX [1981], p.27, has suggested that Isabella kept the diptych until at least 1506, on the grounds that it might have been the prototype of a Veronica by Costa. 56 SHEARMAN, op. cit. in n.14, p.77. It may be noted that the MontefeltroDella Rovere court was at Gubbio and Fossombrone between June and November 1505. Guidobaldo was in Rome from 23rd December 1504 until at least 8th July 1505. A date for Saint George after the spring of 1505 is also a consequence of accepting Perino's drawings in Budapest and Stockholm as copies of early studies by Raphael, for the dragon-helmet that they both show was taken from the painted version of the Battle of Anghiari,begun after April 1505.

Shorter

Notices

The question of St George's garter

BY HELEN S. ETTLINGER

s' I owe my knowledge of this drawing to the kindness of Andrew Robison; it will be exhibited at Washington as this article appears. The provenance is from Lanier and Lely, and the medium is black chalk, warm-brown wash and white heightening, partly oxidised. 52 The radiograph was kindly made available by David Brown. 3 The importance of Memling's diptych for Raphael was first established by C. VOLPE:'Due questioni raffaellesche', Paragone,75 [1956], p.12. I would add another quotation from the diptych: of the deer among the of c.1506 at background trees in the Saint John in Raphael's Self-portrait Hampton Court.

OLDlegends die hard. In the nineteenth century J. D. Passavantwrote that Raphael'sSt George andtheDragon, then in the Hermitageand today in the NationalGalleryof Art, Washington (Fig.23), had been commissionedby Guidobaldo da Montefeltre, the Duke of Urbino,as a gift to Henry VII of England.' This contentionwas encouragedby the HONI inscribed on the garter worn by St George (Fig.24),

I J. D. PASSAVANT: Santi [1860], Vol.II, Raphaeld'Urbin et son pire Giovanni pp.42ff.

25

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1. St George andthedragon, by Raphael. Black chalk underdrawing,pen and brown ink, 34 by 25 cm. (Private collection, England).