The Harewood sheet was surely one of a substantial number of figure studies for an altarpiece depicting the Pentecost that Titian executed for the high altar of the later suppressed church of Santo Spirito in Isola on the eponymous island in the Venetian lagoon. And in cases such as this, it is always helpful to remember just how many drawings have been lost. Scholarly consensus today, however, is shifting away from this received wisdom, as careful consideration of the evidence demonstrates that Titian and his Venetian colleagues relied extensively upon drawing, albeit in different and less systematic ways than their Central Italian contemporaries. This depends on a tradition originating in 16th-century critical discourse, most significantly promulgated by the Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari, whose biased devaluation of Venetian art rested primarily on its failure to follow Tuscan precepts of drawing. Traditionally this dearth of surviving drawings by the master has been explained by the assertion that Titian did not draw much, preferring rather to paint his compositions directly onto the canvas without preparing them on paper first. The large majority of survivals from Titian’s hand are in public collections (including six sheets in the UK), while this is one of only a handful still in private hands (including two others in the UK, in the Devonshire Collection), and – depending on one’s attributional generosity – the only one executed in chalk. By contrast, we have some 460 sheets from his much shorter-lived contemporary Raphael and around 600 from the equally long-lasting Michelangelo, who we know systematically to have destroyed his drawings. Although his career spanned seven decades, fewer than 50 drawings reasonably attributable to Titian ( c. Purchased by an overseas buyer from the collection of the Earl of Harewood for £4.4 million (excluding VAT), it will leave these shores for its new home after 19 December unless a UK buyer comes forward to match the price.
On 20 September the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced that a temporary export bar had been placed on a Study of a Kneeling Man by Titian.
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