Parmigianino

This small drawing was placed by Pierre-Jean Mariette on the same mount as another small fragment featuring a Reclining Male Nude with Ornament.¹ A. E. Popham grouped the present drawing with two other studies of women seated on beds – one now in the Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, the other now in the Courtauld Gallery, London.² Popham dates these sheets to Parmigianino’s Roman, or, more probably, to his Bolognese period, and points out that if connected, the Morgan sketch is likely of an earlier date than its style might suggest. Achim Gnann found the connection plausible and similarly dated the present study to Parmigianino’s Bolognese period.³

It is likely that the drawings – especially those in Budapest and London – were drawn from posed models. Andor Pigler has noted that the object at the feet of the foremost figure in the Budapest drawing is a bowl of glowing embers; the pose of the woman in the Courtauld drawing is not far from a Lucretia; and the pose of the woman in the Morgan sheet is not far from a Susannah, of biblical fame.⁴

Footnotes:

1. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. I, 46d(2).
2. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, inv. 58.105; Popham 1971, 1: 56, no. 45. Courtauld Gallery, London, inv. D.1952.RW.1665; Popham 1971, 110, no. 261.
3. Gnann 2007, 461, no. 685.
4. For Pigler’s opinion, which was relayed orally, see Fenyő 1965, 71-72, no. 33.