This drawing entered the Morgan’s collection as one of a number of sheets added – at an unknown time – to the album of drawings mainly by Cesare da Sesto. Giulio Bora proposed an attribution to Camillo Boccacino, under whose name the drawing was previously catalogued, but recently, Nicholas Penny has instead recognized the drawing as related to decorative motifs employed by Silvio Cosini and other artists in the circle of Michelangelo, for example in a marble altar frame at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 58.121).
Watermark: none.
One of thirty four sixteenth-century Italian drawings formerly mounted in a nineteenth-century album, the Cesare da Sesto Album.
Formerly attributed to Camillo Boccacino, Cremona 1504/5-1546 Cremona.
Inscribed on verso, at upper left, in pen and purple ink, "Questo libro".
Boccaccino, Camillo, 1504-1546, Formerly attributed to.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Bernick 2019, 152-53; Penny 2019, 28-29.
Charles Fairfax Murray, Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by C. Fairfax Murray (J. Pierpont Morgan Collection), 4 vols, London 1905-1912 [I: Collection J. Pierpont Morgan. Drawings by the Old Masters formed by C. Fairfax Murray; A Selection from the Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by C. Fairfax Murray [1905]; IV: J. Pierpont Morgan Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by C. Fairfax Murray], II, no. tk, repr. (Cesare da Sesto).