Young Woman in Antique Dress with Arms Outstretched with a Round Object

Author: Rhoda Eitel-Porter

The drawing was once attributed to Raphael (1483-1520), and as Paul Joannides noted, the pose is loosely inspired by the figure of a fleeing mother at left in Marcantonio Raimondi’s (1480-1534) engraving^[1] after Raphael of the Massacre of the Innocents, of around 1512.^[2] Franz Koenigs acquired the sheet in 1927 at auction in Amsterdam as by an artist from the school of Raphael, whereas Knab, Mitsch and Oberhuber gave it to Raphael in full in their catalogue of 1983, suggesting that it might have been for the figure of a running servant of Psyche for an unexecuted lunette in the Loggia of Psyche in Rome.^[3] The attribution was, in this author’s opinion, rightly rejected in a publication by Richard Harprath of 1985, as well as by others. In a note from 1962 in the museum files, Philip Pouncey proposed an artist from the circle of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), Pontormo (1494-1557) or Domenico Puligo (1492-1527). Indeed, the facial type with deep-set vertical ovals for the eyes recalls Pontormesque Florentine mannerism. The name of Puligo, an assistant of Del Sarto who was also influenced by Pontormo, had already been mooted by Bernard Berenson in 1938. Puligo’s oeuvre is minuscule, however, and stylistic comparisons with the few accepted drawings by him, such as the red chalk Virgin and Child with Two Saints in New York,^[4] dated 1515-20 on grounds of style, are not convincing. The closest parallel among secure drawings by Del Sarto, the red chalk Birth of St John the Baptist in London,^[5] which is a compositional study for a fresco in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence, of 1526, is also well removed in style from the Rotterdam drawing. Thus the attribution remains open.  

The drawing shows a female figure in antique dress with the knot of hair on her head often seen in depictions of Venus or Apollo and also similar to the mother in Raphael’s Massacre. She seems to be running or at least leaning forward, touching something round or oval in front of her, possibly a medallion, cartouche, mirror or hoop, and one might imagine her as an allegorical figure of Victory inscribing a shield.^[6] A similar figure of a running female, albeit as a nude, holding a round object appears on a double-sided pen-and-ink drawing with sketches inspired by the antique in Budapest,^[7] given to Perino del Vaga (1501-1547), although the resemblance in motif is likely to be a coincidence.