Seated Virgin Mary with a Girdle Surrounded by Four Cherubim (Design for Embroidery)

Author: Albert Elen

This drawing was included in the Grahl sale (1885) as a work by Raffaellino del Garbo, but was later in the Koenigs Collection (c.1927-1935) classified as anonymous, fifteenth-century Florentine. It is so far unpublished.

Del Garbo was a pupil of Filippino Lippi (c.1457-1504) and had a studio in the Via del Garbo in Florence from the turn of the century. Under his true name of Raffaelle de’ Capponi (also recorded as De’ Carli) he was celebrated by the biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his Vite (1550/1568) as a talented draughtsman of embroidery designs, while he never lived up to his calling as a painter.^[1]

This Virgin seated among cherubim is closely related to traditional depictions of the Madonna della Cintola (Madonna of the Belt), such as the one by Bernardo Daddi (c.1290-1348) in the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo (1394-1395) in Prato. This drawing, in which the Virgin is depicted with a belt, was probably trimmed to its circular frame at an early date. That round shape is already an indication of the function of the drawing. It is one of a small group of Del Garbo’s designs for embroideries, to which two signed sheets in Florence and one in New York also belong.^[2] The pricked contours are characteristic of these drawings.^[3] The scenes were representations probably served to be transferred to religious vestments, such as Del Garbo’s most important commission, an embroidered chasuble and mitre for Cardinal Silvio Passerini in Cortona.^[4] It is adorned with several depictions of saints in medallions, as well as a Virgin and Child on the central, vertical panel of the mitre.

Although they are small in size, these pricked drawings can be referred to as cartoons for transferral at full scale to the surface to be embroidered. The remnants of black powder, probably charcoal, on the recto with which the drawing was pounced are also evidence of that function, as is the correction of the Virgin’s head on a pasted fragment applied before the pricking. The heavy contours around and in the drapery folds of the Virgin’s garment and the volumes modelled with washes and white heightening on prepared paper, relate this drawing very closely to the others. In addition, the cherubim are very similar to those in another small drawing by Del Garbo in New York,^[5] which is also a pricked embroidery design with traces of powder, and like the Rotterdam sheet is from the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence. However, the handling of line in the Rotterdam drawing is a little dry compared to the one in New York, which does not preclude it being the work of a studio assistant.^[6]