This magnificent drawing is a late compositional study for the fresco of the Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, painted around 1575 on the vault of the Orsini (later Ghislieri) chapel in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale in Rome. Dedicated to the Nativity of Christ, the chapel was founded in 1575 by Francesca Orsini and decorated at her behest by Marcello Venusti, Raffaellino da Reggio, and Jacopo Zucchi; it was ceded to Giuseppe Ghislieri in about 1640.1 Venusti’s altarpiece depicts the Adoration of the Shepherds, and the lateral paintings, by Zucchi, are an Adoration of the Magi on the left and a Circumcision on the right. The vault, decorated in fresco by Raffaellino, comprises a tondo of the Holy Spirit with Angels flanked by the Massacre of the Innocents on the left and the Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph on the right, with figures of the prophets David and Isaiah on the underside of the arch. The Annunciation mentioned by Giovanni Baglione as in faccia—in other words, above the entrance arch—was lost in the course of a restoration in 1641.2 The chapel decoration was presumably completed shortly before 7 April 1576, the date of the privilege to celebrate Mass granted by Pope Gregory XIII and inscribed on the right-hand pilaster.3 Originally the third on the left upon entering, the chapel of the Nativity became the second on the left when, in the nineteenth century, part of the church was demolished to make way for a wider road.
Raffaellino is said to have arrived in Rome during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–78) or possibly somewhat earlier, and he spent the rest of his brief career there. By the time he received the San Silvestro commission, Raffaellino had worked as Giovanni de’ Vecchi’s assistant on the frescoes in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (ca. 1574) and was working independently on the Loggia of Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican (1575– 77), the Oratorio del Gonfalone, and his only known oil painting, the Tobias and the Angel in the Galleria Borghese. Both Raffaellino’s paintings and drawings reveal him to be a close follower of Taddeo Zuccaro, who had died before Raffaellino settled in Rome. Inspired by both Taddeo’s and his brother Federico’s calligraphic handling, Raffaellino developed a virtuoso style characterized by an elegant pen line, generous dark brown washes that modulate the design, dynamic compositions, and elongated facial types.
The idea that the drawing might have been after the fresco rather than a study for it originated in an article of 1939 by Collobi, who had incorrectly assigned to Raffaellino the frescoes by Zucchi and therefore dated them too early, ca. 1572–73, but rightly understood that the Apparition to St. Joseph drawing was a later work, created closer to the end of the artist’s career. Knowing the drawing only from its illustration in the 1937 publication by Borenius and Wittkower, Gere and Pouncey in 1983 adopted this idea, suggesting that the sheet could have been made by Raffaellino with the intention of executing a chiaroscuro woodcut. The differences between drawing and fresco, however, would be unusual for a copy. In the painted version the angel’s wings are lowered, whereas in the drawing they are upright. In addition, the secondary biblical episode of the Flight into Egypt has been moved farther back in the pictorial space; thus in the fresco the warning to Joseph to flee Herod, communicated by an angel appearing in a dream as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13), more emphatically dominates the composition. It seems reason- able to conclude, as have many other scholars since, that the Morgan sheet is a late preparatory study for the fresco.4
—REP
Footnotes:
- Information on the Orsini/Ghislieri patronym taken from T. M. di Blasio, San Silvestro al Quirinale, n.p.: n.d. (2006) [brochure on the church provided in the church itself, based on di Blasio’s archival research] and oral communication in 2008 between Dr. di Blasio and Eveline Baseggio, Research Assistant, Morgan Library & Museum. Dr. di Blasio’s brochure was based on her own archival research, which she kindly shared with us.
- Baglione 1642, 26; Faldi 1951, 332n5; Gere and Pouncey 1983, 145.
- Gere and Pouncey 1983, 145; transcription in Huys 1999, 55n46.
- Recognized as such by Diane DeGrazia in Washington and Parma 1984, 341 and 342n5; Aidan Weston-Lewis in Edinburgh 1999, under no. 9, 173n4; and Marciari 2006, 190.
*This entry was first published in From Raphael to Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, National Gallery of Canada, 2009.
Inscribed at lower left in pen and brown ink, "Zuchero."
Mond, Robert, 1867-1938, former owner.
Bunzl, Yvonne Tan, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, donor.
Rhoda Eitel-Porter and and John Marciari, Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2019, no. 120.
Selected references: Borenius and Wittkower 1937, no. 275; Collobi 1939, 13-14; Faldi 1951, 332n5; Gere and Pouncey 1983, 145; Washington and Parma 1984, no. 114; London 1996, no. 6; Edinburgh 1999, 173n4; Marciari 2006, 190; Bigi Iotti and Zavatta 2008, 81; Ottawa 2009, no. 106; Palazzi 2010, 49; Bolzoni 2016, no. A32.
Tancred Borenius and Rudolf Wittkower, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by Sir Robert Mond, London, 1937, no. 275,repr., pl. XLIX (as Federico Zuccaro).
Licia Collobi, "Disegni di Raffaellino da Reggio," Critica d'Arte, vol. 4, April-December 1939, pp. 13-14, fig. 2 (as Raffaellino).
I. Faldi, Contributi a Raffaellino da Reggio, in "Bollettino d'arte," 36, 1951, p. 332, under note 5, fig. 5.
John A. Gere and Philip Pouncey, Italian drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: artists working in Rome c. 1550 to c. 1640, London, 1983, p. 145.
Diane DeGrazia, Correggio and His Legacy: Sixteenth-Century Emilian Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Wasington, and Galleria Nazionale, Parma, 1984, no. 114, p. 341, repr. (study for the fresco).
Washington, National Gallery of Art, and Parma, Palazzo della Pilotta, Correggio and His Legacy, March-July 1984, no. 114, ill.
Yvonne Tan Bunzl, Master Drawings, London, 1996, no. 6, repr.
Michael Clarke et al., The Draughtsman's Art: Master Drawings from the National Gallery of Scotland, exh. cat., National Gallery of Scotland, 1999, under no. 9, p. 173, note 4.
John Marciari, "Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican", The Burlington Magazine, March 2006, p. 190, and note 12 (final preparatory study).
Alessandra Bigi Iotti and Giulio Zavatta, Raffaellino da Reggio. Tracce di una biografia artistica, 2008, p. 81, fig. 42.
David Franklin, ed., From Raphael to the Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, exh. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2009, pp. 338-339, no. 106, repr.