Lot Essay
The three studies of heads on this sheet correspond with those of spectators in the crowd surrounding Jesus in the altarpiece with the Raising of the child of a widow of Nain in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Orvieto (fig. 1). Federico was commissioned to paint two altarpieces - the Raising of the Widow’s Son and the Healing of the Blind Man - for a chapel in the cathedral in 1568 (the two works are now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Orvieto), but completed the project only two years later in 1570. Both paintings are executed in oil on slate. The present drawing documents the elaborate genesis of the painting and its preparatory studies. The head on the recto may be a study from life, others connected to the same altarpiece survive (for example, a sheet with a group of figures in the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris (inv. 1975-T.12); see J. Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, III, no. 137, pls. 160 and 161). The two heads on the verso are offsets from another sheet, indicating that Federico was probably trying to see how these figures would appear in reverse.
We are grateful to James Mundy for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing.
We are grateful to James Mundy for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing.