Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (2(38).2013)

334

Late Medieval and Early Modern Art

outlined in black chalk and enclosed in a single-line ink frame. The reinforcement of the line
in light brown ink, which gives it darker accents, is visible throughout most of the sketch and
resembles a procedure in Esther before Ahasuerus. The two share a change in composition: in
the Warsaw drawing a narrowing and in the Paris drawing a significant broadening. Karel G.
Boon has determined44 that the nature of the drawing in the Fondation Custodia resembles
the Design for a Triptych with Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist (fig. 12 and fig. 13).45
Indeed, they have many features in common. J. Richard Judson describes its style as the one
in which “[...] the figures are outlined with long continuous contours, the light application of
the washesf...].”46 We can add to the shared characteristics of the two drawings their method of
presenting architecture: in the right panel of the Triptych, which shows The Dance of Salome,
and the recto of the left panel with its scene of Birth of Saint John the Baptist. Judson, pointing
out the similarity between several figures and those in the central section of the Lisbon triptych
mentioned earlier, proposed c. 1540 as the date of the creation of the London design.47 He is
right if we consider the architecture in the drawings (which resembles that of the tapestiy of
The Assassination of Caesar and the works in the “Story of Abraham” series), the contoured
nature of the lines and the sparseness of the wash shared by the two works. Because of the sty-
listic similarity of the architectural parts, the subdued expression of the figures in the Warsaw
drawing and its procedures with contours and method of its wash, which make it resemble the
works at the Fondation Custodia and in the British Museum, it seems justified to date Esther
before Ahasuerus a little later, at 1541-43.
The tapestry based on the Warsaw design has not been found, yet the motif of the group
of figures on the right, the similarly developed architectural background and the proportions
of the whole composition, can be found in the tapestry Romulus Reveals the Head of Numitor
to Amulius in the series “Story of Romulus and Remus” (fig. 14).48 Even the platforms with
the thrones of the two rulers are similar. This scene, and its whole series, must have become
well-known since its subsequent editions continued to appear as late as the early seventeenth
century.49 Even without any surviving cartoon or preliminary sketch, art historians have long
attempted to examine the stylistic features of the composition to hone in on the author of its

44 Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings..., op. cit., p. 96.
45 Pen, brown ink, brown wash, paper, 21.1 x 31.9 cm, inv. no. 1854,0628.38, The British Museum, London.
See John Oliver Hand et al., The Age of Bruegel. Netherlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Centuiy, exh. cat., National
Gallery of Art, Washington, 7 November 1986 -18 January 1987, The Pierpont Morgan Libraty, New York, 30 January
- 5 April 1987 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1986),
pp. 116-7, cat- no- 37 T- Richard Judson).
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid. Karel G. Boon dates the drawing at the Fondation Custodia to 1534-35, ^ut R would seem that if
we take into account Judson’s reasoning about the London Triptych (and considering the fact that Serlio’s original
Regole... was published in 1537), its creation date should be moved closer to 1540.
48 Private collection, London, 210x310 cm. Made in the workshop of Willem de Pannemaker in Brussels
c. 1540-45. It is one in a series of four tapestries purchased in 1550 by the son of Charles V, Philip (later Philip II king
of Spain). See Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty..., op. cit., pp. 306-7, fig. 15.6.
49 Including tapestries at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (series VIII and XXI), c. 1560, see
Elisabeth Mahl, “Die Romulus und Remus-Folgen der Tapisseriensammlung des Kunsthistorischen Museums,”
Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 26 (1965), pp. 7-40. Neue Folge, 25; The Toledo Museum
of Art, Ohio, see Anna Gray Bennett, Five Centuries of Tapestiyfrom The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Revised
Edition (San Francisco, Calif.: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1992), p. 166, fig. 64; The
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1625, see Gray Bennett, op. cit., pp. 166-9, cat- no- 4^- $ee a^so Delmarcel,
op. cit., p. 159, fig. 5.5; Campbell, Tapestiy in the Renaissance..., op. cit., pp. 397,398, fig. 189.