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Lot Essay
The present work was known to Popham only through the print by Rosaspina published at the end of the 18th Century when the drawing was in the Armano Collection, A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino, New Haven and London, 1971, O.R. 12, pl. 103. On this evidence Popham connected it to The Vision of Saint Jerome in the National Gallery, London. Painted for the first chapel on the right of the entrance to the Church of San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome, the picture is lit from the right, while the present drawing is lit from the left. The drawing may, therefore, have been conceived for another project. Moreover, a drawing for The Vision of Saint Jerome, correctly lit from the right, is in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, M. Maiskaya, I grandi disegni Italiani dell' Museo Pushkin di Mosca, Milan, 1986, no. 7.
The arrangement of the Virgin with the Child on clouds is derived from Raphael's Madonna di Foligno, although the manner in which the Child is suspended from His Mother's breast is unusual.
The National Gallery picture dates from the last years of Parmigianino's Roman period, just before the Sack of Rome in 1527. The atmospheric handling of the present drawing might suggest an earlier date, even before the artist's departure from Parma in 1524.
The arrangement of the Virgin with the Child on clouds is derived from Raphael's Madonna di Foligno, although the manner in which the Child is suspended from His Mother's breast is unusual.
The National Gallery picture dates from the last years of Parmigianino's Roman period, just before the Sack of Rome in 1527. The atmospheric handling of the present drawing might suggest an earlier date, even before the artist's departure from Parma in 1524.