St Christopher with the Christ Child

Author: Klazina Botke

In 2002 Marzia Faietti attributed this study to the Bolognese artist Marcantonio Raimondi,^[1] one of the pre-eminent engravers in the first half of the sixteenth century. He was famous above all for his reproductions of works by such contemporaries as Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Raphael (1483-1520).^[2] A substantial group of his pen drawings has survived.^[3] His style is distinguished by clearly articulated forms, with delicate hatchings for the main shadows. Although those cross-hatchings are admittedly sparing in this sheet, the study is otherwise stylistically close to other early works of his. The handling of line is closest to that found in a sheet in Bayonne, with elegant figures from the same flowing pen.^[4]

At lower left there is a stamp with the name of the collector Carlo Prayer (1826-1900), and on the reverse the corresponding letter and numeral code P/247. Prayer owned several sheets by Raimondi that were once part of a book of drawings. Some of them were auctioned at Christie’s in 1988, while others are now to be found in collections in New York, Bayonne and Lausanne.^[5] The Rotterdam sheet very probably came from the same source. It is not clear whether the scene of Christopher and the Christ Child was a preliminary study for a specific work, but in any event the figures do not match those in the two prints that Raimondi devoted to the same subject.^[6]