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Navicella (recto)
Also known as: Page from a Sketchbook: An Adaptation of Giotto's Navicella
About the Artwork
Parri Spinelli was most important painter from Arezzo in the early 1300s. About 30 of his drawings are extant, more than for any other artist of the period, when drawing was just beginning to be common to artistic practice. Spinelli used a quill pen and ink on a large sheet of paper to copy the composition of a monumental mosaic by the Florentine artist Giotto that adorned the portico of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome (since destroyed). In this scene from the Bible, Christ walks on water at right, while Saint Peter kneels before him in front of a ship filled with Christ’s disciples. Spinelli focused on the outlines of the figures, using a limited vocabulary of parallel and perpendicular lines to suggest shallow depth and shadow. Paper was rarely wasted. On the other side of the sheet (1961.38.b), Spinelli continued the copy, rendering two large ships and two rowing boats full of people.The drawing formed part of a model or pattern book that Spinelli would have kept in his studio. The book was broken up, probably as early as the 1500s, and two other drawings with the same subject—in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne—are known.
Provenance
?-1574?: Giorgio Vasari, 1511-74, Florence, Italy (according to Richardson, Ottley, Kurz, Virch, Collobi) ?-1747: Johnathan Richardson, Sr., London (Lugt 2183, lower right, in black ink) 1747: His sale, 28 January 1747, no. 68 ?-1798: Sir Joshua Reynolds, London (Lugt 2364, lower right, in black ink) 1798: Probably his sale, 15 March 1798, no. 967. ?-?: C. M. Metz, Rome and London ?-1814: W. Young Ottley, London 1814: His sale, 11 June 1814, no. 622 ?1814-?1830: possibly Sir Thomas Lawrence (Lugt 2445, incomplete blind stamp, lower left) ?-1860: Samuel Woodburn, London 1860: His sale, Christie, Manson, Wood, London, 12 June 1860, no. 1230 (as Giotto) ?-?: Gase, Paris ?-1959: Marquess of Northampton, Castle Ashby 1959: His sale, Christie, Manson, Woods, London, 1 May 1959 1961: With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London 1961: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review (1961). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 1-26, 1961). The International Style: The Arts in Europe around 1400. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD (organizer) (October 23-December 2, 1962). Old Master Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 10-31, 1964). Drawings: France, Italy, Netherlands. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 1-March 24, 1965). Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967). Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 9, 1967-January 1, 1968). Italian Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 26, 1968). Florence and the Arts: Five Centuries of Patronage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 13-September 19, 1971). Treasures on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 10-July 24, 1988). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). Michelangelo: Mind of the Master. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 22, 2019-January 5, 2020).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Parri Spinelli (Italian, 1387–c. 1453)
- Date
- c. 1410s
- Medium
- pen and brown ink (iron gall)
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 27.2 x 37.2 cm (10 11/16 x 14 5/8 in.); Secondary Support: 32.8 x 42.8 cm (12 15/16 x 16 7/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1961.38.a
More by Parri Spinelli in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000327
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