Fra Bartolomeo

In 1500, Fra Bartolommeo gave up painting to become a novice in the monastery of San Domenico in Prato, leaving his drawings for the unfinished fresco of the Last Judgement in the cloister of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova to Mariotto Albertinelli, who completed the mural to Fra Bartolommeo’s designs. There is every indication that the Frate left other drawings, perhaps his entire workshop stock, to his former partner, Mariotto Albertinelli, for many of the latter’s paintings from the years immediately following appear to be based on the Frate’s designs (see for instance Albertinelli IV, 9-10).

The present drawing is no doubt such an example, used by Albertinelli as the model for the Virgin of the Annunciation, painted in grisaille on one of the exterior wings of his small triptych of 1500, now in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan (inv. 1116; Mottola Molfino, Natale, and Brusa 1982, 158-59, no. 199; 404, no. 348). Albertinelli barely altered the Frate’s design, the chief difference between the two works being the position of the Virgin’s left hand, which in the painting is lowered and holds a book. The pose of the figure of the Virgin is echoed in a drawing by Fra Bartolommeo of a female standing saint in the Louvre, Paris, which Fischer dates to ca. 1500 (inv. RF 470 verso; Paris 1994-95, 24-25, no. 4).

Albertinelli again used Fra Bartolommeo’s design for the Virgin in 1503 when he painted the Annunciation predella that accompanies his monumental Visitation, now in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (Berti and Caneva 1979, 117, nos. P19-20).

A further study by Fra Bartolommeo for Albertinelli’s Virgin Annunciate of the Poldi Pezzoli triptych and the Uffizi predella is to be found in the figure at right on the verso of a sheet in the Louvre, Paris (inv. RF5556; Paris 1994-95, 65, no. 34). Other closely related representations of the Virgin are found in three drawings in the Uffizi, Florence: inv. 452 E verso (Petrioli Tofani 1986-87, 203, no. 452 E); 465 E verso (Petrioli Tofani 1986-87, 208, no. 465 E); and 490 E (Petrioli Tofani 1986-87, 221, no. 490 E).

Ridolfi’s detailed description of the drawings by Fra Bartolommeo that belonged to Count Ottolini suggests – and Chris Fischer has noted – that the present drawing was formerly part of the same sheet as a further study in the Musée du Louvre depicting the Annunciation to the Virgin (inv. no. RF 5558; Paris 1994-95, no. 38), which Fischer dates to 1504-05 on the basis of the recto’s probable connection to a series of scenes illustrating the life of Saint John the Baptist that Fra Bartolommeo completed during these years.