BP-catalogue2023#Final - Flipbook - Page 12
Received as a master painter in Antwerp in 1533,
Leonard Thiry is documented as collaborating on
the decoration of the Galerie de François I at the
Château de Fontainebleau from 15361. He was one
of the main collaborators of Rosso Fiorentino (14941540) and became one of his most skillful imitators,
especially for works intended for printmaking. Active
in Fontainebleau at least until 1543, he also worked
under the orders of Primaticcio (1503-1570), with
whom he developed a more personal style, free of the
Rosso imprint. A stay in Paris at the end of the 1540s
is possible but not attested. According to Jacques
Androuet du Cerceau, Thiry died in Antwerp in 1540.
Thiry largely contributed to the diffusion of the art of
the first Fontainebleau school thanks to the numerous
prints which were engraved after his compositions by
Léon Davent (active 1540-1556) on the one hand,
and by the Parisian burinists, Pierre Milan (active
around 1540) and René Boyvin (1525-1598), on
the other. His known work is, in fact, mainly limited
to prints executed after his inventions and to some
eighty drawings now preserved. These are copies after
Rosso, drawings for engraving or for stained glass2,
ornamental drawings as well as some drawings whose
purpose still escapes us.
The present drawing belongs to the latter category,
although it is partially squared and blackened on the
reverse. An autonomous and inventive study and not
a repetition of a Rosso’s invention, as the beautiful
pentimento of the Virgin’s head seems to confirm, it
is tempting to see it as a project for a stained glass
window. Its subject matter brings it close to three
small double-sided drawings in the Albertina depicting
the Holy Family with little St. John3 and to a recently
reappeared sheet also depicting the Virgin and Child
with little St. John, now in the Horvitz collection4.
Compared to these, the present sheet, which is larger
in size, is of a more accomplished workmanship. With
its broad strokes, its large flat washes, its ragged
figures, its slender fingers, its complicated folds, the
drawing seems to offer a perfect illustration of Thiry’s
art, between Rosso’s influence and the development of
a more personal style.