Sketch for an Altarpiece

The Sketch for an Altarpiece, dated 1575 and held at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, offers a rare insight into Jacopo Bassano's working process at mid-career. Preparatory sketches or bozzetti for large devotional works were made to establish overall compositional relationships before committing to the final large-format canvas or panel. By 1575 Bassano was working with his sons in a productive workshop that generated multiple versions of successful compositions, and a sketch of this kind may represent either his own compositional thinking or a design prepared for workshop execution. The RISD Museum's collection includes European paintings from several periods, and this work holds interest both as a reflection of Bassano's compositional approach and as evidence of the kind of preparatory practice common in large Italian workshops. Its relatively modest scale and the informality appropriate to a sketch format allow glimpses of Bassano's rapid, confident placement of figures and light before the refinements of the final work.

Oil on canvas in sketch format, the work likely shows more exposed ground and more summary brushwork than a finished composition, with figures placed broadly and compositional masses established without detailed resolution. The speed of execution appropriate to a bozzetto reveals Bassano's fundamental pictorial decisions — figure grouping, light direction, tonal contrasts — unobscured by subsequent finishing work.