A Kneeling Saint and Study of the Christ Child

Author: Giada Damen

Both Annegrit Schmidt and Philip Pouncey, when studying this fragmentary parchment sheet in the 1950s, suggested an attribution to the Bolognese painter and sculptor Amico Aspertini, who made many studies after antiquity.^[1] The drawing, however, remained unpublished until Marzia Faietti and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian confirmed the attribution to Aspertini and included it in the 1995 catalogue of the artist’s works.^[2] The pen work in the two studies of the kneeling saint – probably St Jerome – and the Christ Child on the recto suggests a dating for the sheet at the very beginning of the sixteenth century. It has been noted that the figure of St Jerome, although not identical, bears a strong resemblance to the same saint in the so-called Pala del Tirocinio in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna.^[3] The draped figures on the verso are drawn with a linear contour style also characteristic of Aspertini’s manner. These studies can be connected with the figures in another work by the artist, the predella with The Marriage of the Virgin in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara.^[4] Although the specific function of the sheet is not certain, Aspertini was probably elaborating ideas for figures he would use in painted compositions in the early years of the sixteenth century. The sheet may have belonged to a large sketchbook similar to Aspertini’s Codex Wolfegg.