Attributed to LODOVICO POZZOSERRATO

Mechelen ca. 1550 — 1604 Treviso

Christ at Table of Simon the Pharisee

traces of black chalk, pen & brown ink, brush & wash. 51/2 x 111/8" (13.8 x 28.2cm). laid down. inscribed on the verso in a modern hand John Van Achen, Cologne Born 1552

provenance:
the initials fA embossed l/r;
Dr. William Suida, Vienna and New York;
by descent, private collection, CT

exhibited:
Wine and Spirit, rituals, remedies and revelry, Mount Holyoke Art Museum, 2010.

literature:
John Varriano, Wine and Spirit, Rituals, Remedies and Revelry, Mount Holyoke Art Museum exhibition and publication, 2010, 280 pages, 105 illus., this drawing ex-catalogue.

Though the attribution to the present drawing is tentative, the handling and style of it are very close to a few others by the artisit. One notes, for example, View of the Gardens of a Palace, at the Metropolitan Museum ((2001.116). Compositionally, the central axis of the drawing is unusal and comparable, as is the technique of pen & ink and wash, and additionally, the stick-like background figures. Another centrally aligned composition is drawing in the Moravska Galerie (B2119) which also features a large dining table with figures at it and around it, all surrounded by palace buildings. This sheet is quite comparable it is even though it doesn't employ brown wash. It has a red haze over it, a result of rubbed red chalk squaring presumably for transfer. This drawing can be found on the internet.
A Flemish artist working in the Veneto since 1573 , Pozzo was actively employed in the studio of Tintoretto executing landscape backgrounds in the master's paintings, as were other Flemish artists such as Maerten de Vos and Pauwels Franck. By 1582, Pozzo had settled in Treviso where he painted religious works, decorative frescoes and easel paintings.

Typically, this subject is depicted in doors, in the palace of Simon. But an artist of Northern origin adept at depicting landscape and cityscape, would be tempted to altar the setting of the scene.