Profile of a bearded man, wearing a cap, with a study of another head in the lower left corner

A study for the head of the shepherd at lower left in Cavedone's Adoration of the Shepherds, one of the artist's most important works, painted around 1613-1614 for the Arrigoni Chapel in the Church of San Paolo Maggiore, Bologna, and still in situ (E. Negro and N. Roio, Giacomo Cavedone, 1577-1660, Modena, 1996, no. 41). The decoration of the chapel was commissioned in 1611, with Cavedone supplying the Adoration of the Shepherds for the left wall, the pendant Adoration of the Magi for the right wall and frescoes of The Circumcision, The Return from Egypt and Christ disputing with the Doctors on the vault. Cavedone had been in Venice shortly before undertaking this work and was strongly influenced by Tintoretto, as the former attribution of the drawing recognizes.

Other preparatory drawings for the altarpice are in the Louvre (C. Legrand, Le dessin à Bologne, 1580-1620. Le réforme des trois Carracci, exhib. cat., Paris, Louvre, 1994, no. 86) and in the Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (A.M. Ambrosini Massari and R. Morselli, Disegni Italiani della Biblioteca Nazionale di Rio de Janeiro, Pesaro, 1995, no. 30), while studies for individual figures are at Windsor and Stuttgart (E. Negro and N. Roio, op. cit., p. 115).

Fig. 1. Giacomo Cavedone, The Adoration of the Shepherds. Church of San Paolo Maggiore, Bologna.