Attributed to Giovan Francesco Bembo

The style of this drawing suggests a North Italian origin. The soft red chalk style comes close to Parmigianino; a red chalk portrait of a knight of the order of Malta, thought to represent Niccolò Vespucci in around 1526, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. 6190; Maiskaja 1986, no. 8; Ekserdjian 2000 identified it as Niccolò Vespucci; Nova 2006, 36, no. 36), is particularly similar in technique and handling. Both David Ekserdjian and Mario di Giampaolo, however, reject an attribution to Parmigianino for the Morgan portrait. Instead, Mario di Giampaolo plausibly suggested some resemblance to the drawings of Antonio Campi (1523-1587) (e.g. Study of a Telamon, Uffizi, inv. 1638 Orn.; Florence 1999, nos. 69, 75).

A drawn portrait inscribed “Galeatius pallavicinus” – probably the sitter’s name (Galeazzo Pallavicini) – and “A:f. / 80” quite similar in style is in the National Gallery of Canada, where it is attributed to Giovanni Francesco Bembo (inv. 5084; Popham and Fenwick 1965, no. 6; Toronto and elsewhere 2003-04, no. 1). Bembo worked in Busseto and Cremona and visited Rome (Vasari ed. Milanesi 1568, 5: 147). The Ottawa head corresponds quite closely to an onlooker standing at right in the artist’s fresco of the Presentation in the Temple in Cremona cathedral (Puerari 1971, no. 297) as well as with a painting in Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 80 (178); Cremona 1985, 104, no. 1.9.1) first given to Bembo in 1924 by Carlo Gamba (1924, 200-206). In fact the person in all three – Ottawa drawing, Cremona cathedral fresco, which is signed, and Budapest painting – may represent the same man. This is probably Galeazzo Pallavicino, son of Pallavicino Pallavicini, Marchese di Busseto, who was knighted in 1478, died in 1520, and primarily resident in Busseto and Cremona. While the Morgan drawing is of a different sitter, it seems quite possibly by the same artist.