Saint Jerome (recto); Sketches (verso)

This previously unattributed, large study for a kneeling Saint Jerome is an entirely characteristic work by Nosadella, a leading artist of the Bolognese Maniera. Raised in the workshop of Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527-1596) and deeply influenced by his master’s extravagant interpretation of Michelangelo’s style, Nosadella rapidly matured a highly personal and expressive draughtsmanship, despite his meteoric career, which spanned just about two decades. The artist finely outlined the main figure in pen and ink over red chalk and delicately reworked it with wash; at top left, Saint Jerome’s expression was further studied in a detailed red-chalk drawing. This face appears nearly identical to that of Saint Paul, standing next to Saint Jerome, in Nosadella’s altarpiece of the Virgin in Glory with Saints painted in 1563-65 in the Oratory of Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna. The kneeling Saint relates even more closely to a study for a Saint Jerome in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, recognized as by the artist by Lawrence Turčić (inv. 80.3.487; J. Bean, L. Turčić, 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1982, no. 34, ill.). Similar in size and executed in a comparable technique (pen and ink over red chalk), the two drawings appear to have been drawn from the same model, caught from two different angles.