This double sided sheet of studies, seemingly containing preliminary sketches for an Ordination scene, has long posed a problem to scholars. Blunt considered it first a copy before accepting it as a study for Ordination in Poussin's first series of the Sacraments (ca. 1638; now National Galleries of Scotland). Rosenberg and Prat provide a compelling list of stylistic reasons why the sheet is not by Poussin and raise the question of how Nicholas Lanier, a contemporary of Poussin, could have been fooled by the sheet, which also bears an inscription attributing it to Giulio Campi. They suggest that it could be the work of the master "pasticheur" Michel II Corneille.
Inscribed at lower left, in pen and brown ink, "Giulio Campi di Cremona".
Watermark: Fragment of a fleur-de-lis (?) within a circle.
Lanier, Nicholas, 1588-1666, former owner.
Richardson, Jonathan, 1694-1771, former owner.
Cosway, Richard, 1740-1821, former owner.
Clausen, George, 1852-1944, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, pp. 219-23, 290-91, pl. 21 (recto).
Denison, Cara D. French Drawings, 1550-1825. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, no. 15.
Denison, Cara D. French Master Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1993, no. 15, recto and verso repr.
Rosenberg, Pierre and Louis-Antoine Prat, "Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665. Catalogue raisonné des dessins", 2 volumes, Milan, 1994, II, R663, p. 946, repr. (recto and verso).