sht. 52

A

Andrea or Luigi Valadier, one of the ormolu railings for the baptistery of Lisbon Cathedral (plan and elevation), c. 1744-7, graphite, pen, brown ink, brown, yellow, grey and red wash on paper, 295 x 390 mm.

Bibliography: González-Palacios 1993a, II, p. 97, fig. 166; Vale 2017, p. 70, fig. 2; González-Palacios 2018, p. 292, fig. 7_1; González-Palacios 2019, p. 325; Leone 2019a, p. 87; Leone 2019b, pp. 72-73.

B

Luigi Valadier, Design with variants for one of the railings in Lisbon Cathedral, c. 1744-7, graphite, pen, brown ink, various shades of brown and grey wash on paper, 405 x 250 mm.; numbered upper left: “59”; it bears the Roman palm scale in the lower margin with the following inscriptions: “scala di palmi 12. / A / Un palmo di Passetto Romano, diviso in dodici oncie, e le oncie divise in quinti”.

This drawing and the previous one relate to the manufacture of one of the railings in the baptistery attached to Lisbon Cathedral, which was destroyed in the terrible earthquake that struck the city in 1755. King John V of Portugal commissioned a considerable number of works for Lisbon Cathedral from several Roman foundrymen in 1744. Their number included Andrea Valadier, who was assigned the railings for the baptistery. All the work, including Valadier’s railings, were completed by 1747, when they were displayed in Palazzo Cappono-Cartelli in Rome before being shipped to Lisbon (Diario ordinario, no. 4647, 6 May 1747). The payments for the railings, running from 1744 to 6 July 1750, were made out to both Andrea and Luigi, which shows that Luigi must have occupied a prominent place in his father’s workshop while still a young man. As an adolescent, he had also devoted his energies to the study of architecture, thus we cannot rule out the possibility that the two illustrations, together with another (identical to drawing A on this sheet) formerly in the London album, may have been drawn by Luigi at an early age. While for Drawing A on sht. 52 and for its twin in the London album this hypothesis may appear difficult to argue, in this drawing and in another now in the collection of drawings in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (Mandroux França 1995, pp. 89, 101) Luigi’s hand and vivid imagination really do appear to shine through. A further drawing for one of the railings from the Valadier foundry appeared in an album published in the 19th century and now dispersed, which contained all the designs for the railings commissioned by King John V (Valadier 1991, pp. 22-23).

Bibliography: González-Palacios 1993a, II, p. 98, fig. 167; Leone 2019a, p. 87; Leone 2019b, pp. 72-73.