God­fried Schal­ck­en, Dutch, 1643-1706

: Self-portrait (Study for the Uffizi Painting), c. 1694-95 

This famous col­lec­tion, a por­tion of which is still hang­ing in the Uffizi today, was begun by Car­di­nal Leopol­do de’ Medici (1614 – 1675) around 1664.2

His nephew Cosi­mo con­tributed to the col­lec­tion early in the project, and took charge of it after Leopoldo’s death, devot­ing con­sid­er­able time and expense to expand­ing the gallery to include as many notable painters of the past and present as pos­si­ble. The col­lec­tion also includ­ed a num­ber of Dutch artists. Cosi­mo toured the Nether­lands him­self on two occa­sions, in 1667 – 68 and again in 1669, dur­ing which he vis­it­ed the stu­dios of many painters, most notably Rem­brandt’s (1606 – 1669). By the time of the Schal­ck­en com­mis­sion, Cosi­mo had already obtained self-por­traits by Rem­brandt, Ger­rit Dou (1613 – 1675) (Schal­ck­en’s teacher), and Frans van Mieris (1635 – 1681).3

A num­ber of let­ters relat­ed to the Schal­ck­en com­mis­sion sur­vive, which pin­point the date and reveal that it was the artist who first sug­gest­ed, through his agent, that he might con­tribute a paint­ing to the grand duke’s gallery.4

This took place dur­ing Schal­ck­en’s Lon­don peri­od in 1692 – 96, when his fame reached new heights with a broad­er and wealth­i­er clien­tele than that in the Nether­lands at the time.5

This writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence took place between Schal­ck­en’s agent in Lon­don, Thomas Platt (who had spent time in Italy and was famil­iar with Cosi­mo’s col­lec­tion), and the grand duke’s sec­re­tary, Apol­lo­nio Bas­set­ti. One of the main points of dis­cus­sion was how the artist would present him­self. Schal­ck­en pro­posed a night­time set­ting since this was his fore­most spe­cial­ty, and because the gallery of self-por­traits as yet con­tained no oth­ers set at night. Schal­ck­en was par­tic­u­lar­ly cel­e­brat­ed for his can­dle­light scenes, then as now, and he paint­ed at least two other can­dlelit self-por­traits dur­ing his peri­od in Lon­don.6

In anoth­er of these he wears the same archa­ic slashed dou­blet seen here. Such con­trived cloth­ing seems to relate to Schal­ck­en’s pre­sen­ta­tion of him­self in an ele­gant Van Dyck­ian pose, devel­oped in a pre­vi­ous age, with his head engag­ing the view­er from over his shoul­der and his hand ges­tur­ing grace­ful­ly to him­self.7

The sheet of paper Schal­ck­en holds is a mez­zotint by John Smith (1652/54 – 1742) after a now lost paint­ing by Schal­ck­en depict­ing Mary Mag­da­lene by can­dle­light Fig. 67.2.8

Her image is obscured in the paint­ing in the Uffizi, but the gen­er­al form of her fig­ure can just be made out in the draw­ing. The pre­cise iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the print is made clear in the let­ters relat­ed to the com­mis­sion.9

Schal­ck­en includ­ed an impres­sion of the mez­zotint with the fin­ished paint­ing that he sent to the grand duke. Cosi­mo then gave that impres­sion to his sec­re­tary Bas­set­ti, but request­ed that anoth­er be sent, this time (in order for it not to become creased, appar­ent­ly a prob­lem with the first one) rolled around a piece of wood and sent in a tube.10

Smith’s mez­zotint today ranks as one of the best he made. Schal­ck­en com­mis­sioned it from him short­ly after he arrived in Lon­don, a fact we know from Smith’s own notes (in an album pre­served in the New York Pub­lic Library) that he car­ried out the work in 1693.11

Why Schal­ck­en chose to depict him­self hold­ing a print rather than one of his orig­i­nal paint­ings remains some­thing of a mys­tery, but it may be that he planned from the out­set to send Cosi­mo an impres­sion of it, know­ing that he was an avid print col­lec­tor. The sub­ject of Mary Mag­da­lene, in any case, would have cer­tain­ly appealed to his patron’s devout Catholic sen­si­bil­i­ty.12

This draw­ing has long been assumed to be a prepara­to­ry study for the paint­ing, which might indeed be the case, but its high­ly fin­ished nature also sug­gests other pos­si­bil­i­ties in terms of func­tion. Schal­ck­en’s drawn oeu­vre is quite small, num­ber­ing fewer than forty sheets today, many of these rep­re­sent­ing sim­i­lar­ly high­ly fin­ished por­trait draw­ings that relate close­ly to paint­ings.13

A num­ber of schol­ars, begin­ning with Guido Jansen, have sug­gest­ed that some of these might actu­al­ly be ricor­di, or draw­ings made after the paint­ing was com­plet­ed in order for the artist to keep a record of the work once it left the stu­dio.14

Sup­port­ing this notion are a few other draw­ings by Schal­ck­en that are sketch­i­er in nature and appear to have been true prepara­to­ry stud­ies. A third, and more like­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that rather than being a prepara­to­ry study or ricor­do, this draw­ing served as a vidimus, a draw­ing shown to the patron for his or her approval before the paint­ing was exe­cut­ed. The let­ters between Platt and Bas­set­ti do not specif­i­cal­ly men­tion a vidimus, but enough of their dis­cus­sion per­tains to the nature of the agreed com­po­si­tion that send­ing such a draw­ing dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions would not be a sur­prise, nor would one expect it to be specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enced in the let­ters. The strong cen­ter­fold seen in this draw­ing appears to be quite old and might be the result of hav­ing been sent with the letters.

A fas­ci­nat­ing recent dis­cov­ery about the early prove­nance of the draw­ing rein­forces the the­o­ry that it was sent direct­ly to Cosi­mo or his agent as part of the com­mis­sion. In 2015, Jane Shoaf Turn­er pub­lished the ear­li­est spe­cif­ic men­tion of this draw­ing in the pre-1741 inven­to­ry of Francesco Maria Nic­colò Gab­bur­ri (1676 – 1742), a Flo­ren­tine col­lec­tor and diplo­mat in the ser­vice of the grand duke.15

Gab­bur­ri col­lect­ed por­trait draw­ings of artists, per­haps to have engraved as part of his unpub­lished four-vol­ume ​“Lives of the Painters” (Vite de’ pit­tori). Cosi­mo may have gift­ed or sold this draw­ing to Gab­bur­ri, much as he gave Smith’s mez­zotint to his sec­re­tary Bas­set­ti. Also pos­si­ble is that Schal­ck­en sim­ply includ­ed the draw­ing with the fin­ished paint­ing to pro­vide an exam­ple of his drafts­man­ship as an extra gift. What­ev­er the case, the early prove­nance in an Ital­ian col­lec­tion belong­ing to a close asso­ciate of Cosi­mo strong­ly implies that it once belonged to the grand duke himself.

Some fol­low-up let­ters from 1700 men­tion a sketch (schiz­zo) of the paint­ing, made at the request of Schal­ck­en, who had sud­den fears that some nefar­i­ous soul had sub­sti­tut­ed a paint­ed copy of a dif­fer­ent self-por­trait dur­ing the tran­sit to Italy a few years ear­li­er.16

He request­ed that a sketch be made and sent to con­firm the present pose, which was indeed sent and great­ly relieved him. In his cat­a­logue of Schal­ck­en’s oeu­vre, Thier­ry Beherman right­ly accept­ed the Peck draw­ing as an auto­graph self-por­trait, but expressed some hes­i­ta­tion due to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it might be the sketch referred to in the later let­ters.17

His doubts, how­ev­er, are unfound­ed. The style of the draw­ing reveals Schal­ck­en’s dis­tinc­tive vir­tu­osic han­dling in cer­tain pas­sages, such as the face and reflect­ed light on his shoul­der and sleeve, as well as his char­ac­ter­is­tic use of diag­o­nal hatch­ing through­out the com­po­si­tion. This is obvi­ous­ly a fin­ished draw­ing (dis­eg­no), rather than sketch (schiz­zo) made mere­ly for the pur­pose of con­firm­ing the com­po­si­tion for the pan­icked artist back in the Nether­lands. Inter­est­ing­ly, the phys­iog­no­my of the face in the Peck draw­ing does not close­ly match Schal­ck­en’s, who also would have been in his fifties at the time, rather older than the coun­te­nance seems here. This might be due to his use of a stu­dio assis­tant for the pose, just as he did for the only other known self-por­trait draw­ing by the artist, as Wayne Fran­its point­ed out.18

In 1821, the Peck draw­ing had the dis­tinc­tion of being includ­ed in the Col­lec­tion d’im­i­ta­tion de dessins by Chris­ti­aan Josi (1768 – 1828), one of the first pub­li­ca­tions to repro­duce a selec­tion of Euro­pean draw­ings in print 67.3.19

The plate’s extreme­ly high degree of fideli­ty to the form and tex­ture of the draw­ing is the result of a notable process devel­oped by the print­mak­er Cor­nelis Ploos van Ams­tel (1726 – 1798) to make ​“print draw­ings” (prent­tekenin­gen).20

The major­i­ty of the plates in Josi’s pub­li­ca­tion were made by Ploos van Ams­tel (Josi’s teacher), and it has long been assumed in pre­vi­ous lit­er­a­ture that this Schal­ck­en self-por­trait prent­teken­ing was the work of Ploos van Ams­tel as well. As Josi makes clear in the text vol­ume, how­ev­er, this was one of a hand­ful of plates he made him­self using the tech­nique he learned from his men­tor.21

Josi also proud­ly dis­closed that he owned the orig­i­nal draw­ing, stat­ing the price he paid (10 louis), and noted that the artist’s draw­ings were already rare and high­ly sought-after.22

Thus, with­in about the first cen­tu­ry of its exis­tence, the Peck draw­ing had trav­eled from Lon­don where it was made, to Italy, back to Lon­don (where Gab­bur­ri’s col­lec­tion was large­ly sold), and then to Schal­ck­en’s home coun­try of the Nether­lands, where it was repro­duced in a book cel­e­brat­ing great draw­ings. Despite its early fame and long pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry, how­ev­er, this exhi­bi­tion actu­al­ly marks the first known occa­sion that this draw­ing has been pub­licly shown