Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Girolamo Muziano landscape drawing

Rocky Landscape with a Waterfall, Girolamo Muziano, pen and brown ink
Rocky Landscape with a Waterfall, Girolamo Muziano

Pen and brown ink, roughly 19×15″ (48x38cm). Link is to the Getty Museum, which has the original in their collection and both a zoomable and downloadable version on their site. The downloadable version can be gotten at high resolution and a 32MB file size. There is also a zoomable version on Google Art Project.

Muziano was a 16th century Italian painter, known in addition for his landscape engravings. The Getty site suggest that this may have been a study for an engraving. Alternately, the large open area in the left foreground may have been a setting for a figure in the composition, perhaps as part of a series on Saints in landscapes.

I love the artist’s deft handling of the hatching and patterns suggesting direction in the growth of the foliage, and the monumental solidity of the dark central rock outcropping. Look at how he has defined the light-toned mass of rock in the middle-right of the composition with directional strokes (see the third detail, above).

I also admire his use of line weight — and in particular broken lines — to control values, pushing the middle ground back and the background mountains into the distance.