The Virgin and Child with a kneeling saint, with related studies of the same

Rapidly executed in pen and brown ink and wash with corrections in white bodycolour, this sheet was attributed to Federico Barocci until David Lachenmann suggested the attribution to Daniele Crespi. Crespi was one of the leading Milanese artists from the early Baroque, but owing to the artist's untimely death his career only lasted for some ten years. Today around seventy drawings by him have been accepted (N. Ward Neilson, Daniele Crespi, Soncino, 1996, p. 79). This sheet reveals the artist's search for a balanced composition; a first sketch of the kneeling saint has been crossed out and the pentimenti and corrections, especially to the head of the Madonna, show the creative struggle. While the present sheet is not directly related to any of Crespi’s known paintings, it is close in composition to The Madonna and Saints Francis and Charles Borromeo (in reverse) in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan (G. Bora et al., Il Seicento lombardo. Catalogo dei dipinti e delle sculture, exhib. cat., Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, 1973, no. 130, fig. 146). A finished study for that picture is in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (inv. 50/162) and another, double-sided study for an earlier version of that painting (in the church of San Biagio e Beata Vergine Immacolata, Codogno), is in the Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, Budapest (inv. 1892; see A. Czére, ‘Two Newly Identified Drawings by Daniele Crespi’ in Ex Fumo Lucem. Baroque Studies in Honour of Klára Garas, Budapest, 1999, figs. 3 and 6-7).