Clifford Malcolm Brown was inclined to accept what may have been Scholz’s own attribution of this drawing to Lorenzo Costa (Ferrara, ca. 1460 - 1535 Mantua) and dated the drawing to the artist’s Mantuan period after 1507 (Brown 1966 (1979)). The basis for the attribution was comparison with two sheets formerly in the Rudolf collection and one in the Morgan (inv. I, 12a), themselves only attributed to that artist on grounds of style and on circumstantial evidence. In any case, the small format of the present drawing and the smoother and more circling pen line make this a rather unconvincing comparison. The artist of the Scholz drawing is probably of north Italian, possibly Ferrarese origin, and may have been a miniaturist, active in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but in the absence of an alternate name, the old attribution has been preserved for now.
Watermark: none visible through lining.
Scholz, János, former owner.
Notre Dame 1964, no. 16; Brown 1966 (1979), 267, 269, 366, no. 56b.
The Life of Christ : Drawings from the Janos Scholz Collection : Italian Drawings from the 16th through the 18th Century. Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Art Gallery, 1964, no. 16.