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Lot Essay
A new addition to the work of Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, the present sheet fills a significant gap in our knowledge of the design process of one of the artist’s most accomplished paintings, the Madonna and Child with Saint Bruno, executed about 1535 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich, inv. 5289; see M. Di Giampaolo, Girolamo Bedoli 1500-1569, Florence, 1997, no. 7). Smoothly rendered with red chalk – a trademark of 16th-century Parma school draughtsmanship –, the Virgin is tenderly holding the Christ Child, while the Carthusian monk Bruno of Cologne appears from a window in the right background, his hands joined in prayer. In the elegantly elongated figure of the Virgin, with tilted head and pointy hands, Bedoli seems inspired by his cousin Parmigianino's celebrated Madonna of the long neck (Uffizi, Florence, begun in 1534), which also shows a similar pose for the reclining Christ. The sheet relates to other red chalk drawings by Bedoli, like the Virgin and Child in the British Museum (inv. Ff, 1.83; see A.E. Popham, Artists working in Parma in the Sixteenth Century, London, 1967, no. 227, ill.) and the Four studies of a right arm in the Albertina (inv. 2644; see A.E. Popham, 'The Drawings of Girolamo Bedoli', Master Drawings, II, 3, 1964, no. 29, pl. 11), a preparatory study for Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Brera, Milan (Reg. Cron. 465). Although related to works executed in the 1550s, the two drawings share with the present one the soft application of the chalk as well as the artist’s typical reinforcement of the outer contours, done with energetic hatching.
The drawing belongs to the final phase of the Munich Madonna’s design process, following a sketch in pen and ink now at Bergamo (Di Giampaolo, op. cit., no. 60, ill.). The closest comparison remains, however, a drawing at Chatsworth (inv. 644; Di Giampaolo, op. cit., no. 64, ill.) showing the same composition but executed in a slightly different technique, which combines red chalk with white bodycolour (now oxidized). Nearly identical in size but featuring slightly larger figures, the Chatsworth sheet is probably an earlier working drawing that was immediately developed into the present one in a much clearer and more polished rendering. Here, Bedoli established more distinctly a number of details, including the background figure of Saint Bruno, the articulation of the Christ Child (including his left hand and right leg) and the Virgin’s folded drapery around her left arm. Generally considered a peak in Bedoli’s career as a painter, the Munich Madonna and Child with Saint Bruno has been recently re-evaluated as a work by Parmigianino by Achim Gnann (Die 'Maria mit dem Kind einem Mönch'. Das Gemälde und sein Meister, in Parmigianino. Die Madonna in der Alte Pinakothek, exhib. cat., Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 2007, pp. 27-62). He does not, however, question Bedoli's auhorship of the Chatsworth sheet, to which the present drawing is intrinsically related.
We are grateful to Professor David Ekserdjian for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing and for confirming the attribution to Bedoli after examining the original.
The drawing belongs to the final phase of the Munich Madonna’s design process, following a sketch in pen and ink now at Bergamo (Di Giampaolo, op. cit., no. 60, ill.). The closest comparison remains, however, a drawing at Chatsworth (inv. 644; Di Giampaolo, op. cit., no. 64, ill.) showing the same composition but executed in a slightly different technique, which combines red chalk with white bodycolour (now oxidized). Nearly identical in size but featuring slightly larger figures, the Chatsworth sheet is probably an earlier working drawing that was immediately developed into the present one in a much clearer and more polished rendering. Here, Bedoli established more distinctly a number of details, including the background figure of Saint Bruno, the articulation of the Christ Child (including his left hand and right leg) and the Virgin’s folded drapery around her left arm. Generally considered a peak in Bedoli’s career as a painter, the Munich Madonna and Child with Saint Bruno has been recently re-evaluated as a work by Parmigianino by Achim Gnann (Die 'Maria mit dem Kind einem Mönch'. Das Gemälde und sein Meister, in Parmigianino. Die Madonna in der Alte Pinakothek, exhib. cat., Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 2007, pp. 27-62). He does not, however, question Bedoli's auhorship of the Chatsworth sheet, to which the present drawing is intrinsically related.
We are grateful to Professor David Ekserdjian for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing and for confirming the attribution to Bedoli after examining the original.