Art: Grace Notes

The great painters of the Renaissance looked upon drawings with particular affection; they exchanged them with fellow artists as a mark of respect. Their students pored over them for clues to their secrets, for almost nothing else told so much about how they built up their compositions or what sort of scene or gesture would catch their eye and cry out for immediate recording. But they were not only blueprints; they were often masterpieces in themselves. Leonardo’s Leda (see opposite page) almost bursts out of her paper world; a landscape by Rembrandt sweeps up the eye, leads it to fill in details where the artist left only hints.

These drawings are two of more than 3,000 that make up the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire, one of the best in private hands. This week 114 choice samples from the collection will make their U.S. debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The present Duke of Devonshire, No. 11 in the line, is expected to take time off from his duties as a Minister of State in his uncle-in-law’s government to attend the opening. But even without this Grace note the affair would be a major one, for such treasures, so vulnerable to exposure, can only rarely be seen. When the exhibition leaves Washington, it will tour six U.S. and Canadian cities before returning to Chatsworth in Derbyshire, stately home of the Dukes of Devonshire.

Bold Buyer. The bulk of the collection was assembled by the second duke, who succeeded to the title in 1707 and was, according to one contemporary account, “a gentleman of very good sense, a bold orator, and zealous assertor of the liberty of the people.” An example of his very good sense was his purchase of Rembrandt drawings in a day when that titan was temporarily out of fashion.

In 1723, the duke scored a coup by buying more than 200 drawings from the collection of Nicolaes Flinck, the son of a Rembrandt pupil. He also beat out Louis XIV in purchasing a volume of drawings that the French Landscape Painter Claude Lorrain had done as a record of his own paintings.

Historian’s Notes. The drawings tell interesting tales of art history. Correggio’s Two Putti and two companion studies furnish proof that he was responsible for conceiving the decoration in an arch in Parma’s church of St. John the Evangelist. Two Studies of a Man Suspended by his Leg was Andrea del Sarto’s preparation for an unappetizing commission: a painting for public display of some traitors who were to be shown, according to custom, hanging by one leg. One feature of the collection is a number of scenery designs done by Inigo Jones; some still have the daubs of paint dribbled by careless scenery painters nearly three centuries ago.

Whether done as studies or for their own sake, all the drawings are strangely affecting. Leonardo’s Leda—possibly a study for the painting that has been lost—has a sensual rhythm not often revealed by Leonardo. Rembrandt’s landscapes and village scenes are masterful mixtures of meticulousness and freedom. Holbein could almost carve with his crayon, and Rubens, with his delicate and flowing line, could transform an act of drudgery into an act of grace. Somehow, the workings of genius are never more clear than in drawings of the quality of the collection at Chatsworth.