“In la vale”. Intorno a Girolamo da Carpi e alle sculture Della Valle e Medici

The handwriting of the caption “in la vale” appearing on a drawing in the Musée de Grenoble, identical to that on another sheet conserved in the Cooper Hewitt Museum of New York, suggests that both were by the same hand, identified in the past as that of Girolamo da Carpi. It was in fact more probably a pupil of the Ferrarese artist who, like his master, copied ancient statues: sculptures of the Della Valle collection that was among the most visited and studied by artists of the Cinquecento. The drawings by this anonymous artist enable us to trace to this collection statues that had never previously been copied and of which other drawn reproductions are unknown, as is the case with a statue of ‘Venus’ in the Boboli Gardens or that of a ‘Togatus’ in the deposits of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. The idea of identifying the ‘Venus’ drawn on the Grenoble sheet as the statue today standing in the Boboli Gardens has provided us with an opportunity to reconsider its complex history, closely intertwined with that of the ‘Venere Aurea’, one of the nobilia opera of the Gallerie degli Uffizi. At Boboli we also find the ‘Dionysus’ reproduced in the New York drawing, a statue which, despite its excellent condition and fine workmanship, has never been the object of particular interest in the specialized literature, a fact that has prompted a reappraisal of the work in this article aimed at better defining its chronological and typological placement. Lastly, an analysis updated in the light of information emerging from recent restoration work has also been attempted for another marble reproduced on a second sheet of the Musée de Grenoble, the so-called ‘Young Marcus Aurelius’ of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, in whose head – ancient, although not originally belonging to the statue – it is now possible to recognize a portrait of the young Commodus.