Previously attributed to Andrea del Sarto, the present drawing is a ÿtudy for Saint Benedict in Correggio's destroyed fresco of The Coronation of the Virgin in the Benedictine Abbey of San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma. Correggio worked extensively in the church, most notably on the fresco decoration of the cupola and apse. Although no contracts for the decoration survive, the progress of the work may be traced through the series of payments to the artist in the account books of the monastery. The first one dates from July 1520 and the final one from January 1524. The sequence of the execution has been much debated, but the documentary records and the stylistic evidence, not least the preparatory drawings, support the traditional view that the decoration of the cupola preceded that of the apse.

The Virgin was the patron Saint of Parma, with her Coronation featured on the town seal, and thus she was consequently a particularly appropriate subject for this important setting. The present drawing is a study for Saint Benedict, who is placed behind the Coronation to the left of the Virgin. The figure in the fresco corresponds closely with the drawing, although the position of the head was moved to a more frontal one. The finished nature of the sheet would suggest that the pose had already been established and also that Correggio intended that the figure be shown half-length as the Saint appears in the fresco. The technique is Correggio's favoured red chalk on a warm, pinkish background achieved by smudging red chalk on the paper, probably by means of the artist's wetted finger. In technique it is closest to the only other study for one of the flanking saints - Saint John the Baptist - in an English private collection, A.E. Popham, Correggio's Drawings, London, 1957, no. 27, pl. XXXIIa. Excluding the present drawing and a study for one of the angels, discovered by David Ekserdjian in an English public collection and to be published in his forthcoming monograph on the artist, only eleven drawings for the composition are known, nine of which are related to the central Coronation, M. di Giampaolo and A. Muzzi, Correggio I Disegni, Turin, 1988, nos. 27-36, illustrated. The surviving drawings attest to Correggio's customary painstaking preparatory process, reflecting the importance of the commission and the difficulties associated with filling such a large concave space.

Towards the end of the 16th Century practical considerations forced the Benedictines to move the choir from underneath the dome crossing, and to construct a new one beyond. This necessitated the destruction of the apse. Mindful of the beauty of the fresco, the Benedictines went to extraordinary lengths to preserve the memory of it, and in 1586 commissioned the Bolognese artist Cesare Aretusi to paint a faithful, albeit enlarged, copy (fig. 1). They also preserved the central section - now in the Galleria Nazionale, Parma - and some of the heads of the putti. Despite the elaborate attempts to preserve a semblance of the original scheme, the physical proximity of the frescoes in the cupola and the apse which is so important to the visual coherence of the decoration was destroyed by the choir that now separates the two. Furthermore, although Aretusi's pedestrian copy records the composition, it is only through the study of Correggio's preparatory studies that any real impression of the beauty of the original can be gained.

David Ekserdjian and Mario di Giampaolo, the latter on the basis of a photograph, have kindly confirmed the attribution