The Adoration of the Shepherds

According to a label (verso), Dr. Annegrit Schmitt first proposed the attribution to Trometta. The upper section of the composition is identical to that of a drawing of the same subject, size and technique in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, C. von Heusinger, Die Handzeichnungs-sammlung, Braunschweig, 1992, I, p. 298, Inv. Z1189, II, pl. 112. The Braunschweig drawing, previously attributed to Johann Rottenhammer, was given back to Trometta by Hugo Chapmam. Further modelli of the same subject are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (L. Wolk-Simon, Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, exhib. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, no. 83) and in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, J.A. Gere, 'Drawings by Niccol Martinelli, Il Trometta', Master Drawings, 1963, I, p. 17, no. 33, pl. 15a. This series of drawings probably relates to Trometta's picture for San Giovanni in Laterano mentioned by Baglione, 'Fece in s. Giovanni Laterano....la prima capella a man diritta nel tempo di Gregorio XIII, oue sopra l'altare e la Nativita di N. Signore, Verbo hamanato, con li Pastori a olio dipinta, assai bella', quoted in L. Wolk-Simon, op. cit., p. 93.