Studies of a Male Nude Reclining on a Cloud, and a Nude Boy

Author: Mary Vaccaro

Although assigned to Correggio in the collection of Franz Koenigs, this drawing was later demoted to second-tier status (‘after Correggio’) and has never been published.^[1] Intriguingly, it relates to a celebrated fresco cycle for which there are other preparatory studies in Rotterdam still firmly ascribed to the artist. Its function as well as its provenance and attribution merit renewed attention.

From 1519 until 1524, Correggio devised a decorative scheme for much of the interior of the Parmese church of San Giovanni Evangelista, including its cupola and pendentives, main apse, and frieze along the nave. The vast undertaking surely required hundreds, if not thousands, of preparatory studies, yet only about thirty (some double-sided) for the entire project are known today. Chance survival of seven studies for a single pendentive, and an equal number for the figure of Christ in the apsidal scene of The Coronation of the Virgin, underscores the magnitude of such loss and the degree to which the artist rehearsed variants of his ideas in the drawings that do survive.^[2]

Five of the extant autograph studies for San Giovanni Evangelista are in Rotterdam, all acquired by Koenigs in 1929: four small designs for the nave frieze came via the sale of William Bateson’s collection at Sotheby’s, London, along with an important study for the apse belonging to Koenig’s long-time dealer Julius Böhler, whose personal collection Koenigs purchased the same year.^[3] The present drawing was part of the latter group, and the only other assigned therein to Correggio.

The previous attribution deserves to be taken seriously, especially since the drawing bears a striking and not entirely straightforward relationship to the painting in the dome in San Giovanni Evangelista. The bearded man corresponds to one of the cloud-borne apostles (usually identified as Saint Philip) in the luminous vision of Christ that Correggio painted there (fig.), while the child refers to a putto elsewhere in the scene (beneath the saint usually identified as Thomas).^[4] It is unlikely that a draughtsman would have combined the two different passages while copying from the frescoes: indeed, given the extreme difficulty of viewing the cupola from the ground, there are no known early copies after the cupola (only copies after more visible areas such as the pendentives and apse), and the earliest related prints after the frescoes date to 1700.^[5] More plausibly, the drawing is either a study by Correggio or a copy of a lost drawing by him.^[6]

Decipherment of the faded pen inscription (a measure of the overall damage the drawing has sustained) here for the first time allows us better to establish its authorship and history. It must be the work described in the Lawrence exhibition catalogue (no. 87): 'A STUDY FOR ONE OF THE FIGURES IN A CUPOLA, which was destroyed. Red chalk; capital. Size 10½ inches by 10¼. From the collection of the Chevalier Vicar, who has written on the drawing: "Precieux cadeau de M. Righi de Parma, en 1803".'^[7] As it so happens, like the other Correggio drawing in Rotterdam with a Böhler-Koenigs provenance, this sheet was purchased from Samuel Woodburn by Prince William of Orange (later King William II of the Netherlands) in 1838.^[8]