Parmigianino

A. E. Popham dated the drawing to Parmigianino’s Bolognese period, between 1527 and1531.¹ More recently, Carmen Bambach argued that the drawing can be dated to 1528-30, noting that it recalls the artist’s Madonna of the Rose (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), the Virgin and Child (Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire), and the Virgin and Child with Saints Zachariah, Mary Magdalene, and the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Uffizi, Florence).² Bambach further suggests that the composition, as well as the soft rendering of shadows, may have been inspired by Raphael’s late preparatory studies for the Madonna of the Fish and Madonna da Foligno,³ and that it also echoes his painted tondo of the Madonna of the Candelabra in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.⁴

Close in style to the Morgan drawing are the Madonna Enthroned in the Louvre, Paris, and a disputed drawing, Two Angels Supporting a Column, in the British Museum, London, both of which must date to the same period in the artist’s activity as the present sheet.⁵

The Morgan drawing is probably that which Antonio Maria Zanetti reproduced twice as a chiaroscuro woodcut where, however, he added elements in the background that are not included in Parmigianino’s version of the subject. It, therefore, seems likely that Zanetti owned the drawing, which, in turn, suggests that it was once in the collection Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.⁶

Footnotes:

1. Popham 1971, 1: 125, no. 323.
2. Bambach, in New York and London 2000-01, 152, no. 101.
3. Ibid. For examples, see London 1983, nos. 120, 136, 173.
4. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, inv. 37.484; Zeri 1976, 2: 348-54, no. 232.
5. Louvre, Paris, inv. 6384; British Museum, London, inv. 1900-5-10-1.
6. Popham 1971: 1, 32.