Study for St Joseph in 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt'

Author: Albert Elen

Byam Shaw’s (1976, 1983) attribution of this drawing to Maganza, as part of a coherent group of thirteen sheets from the Koenigs Collection which were then considered the work of El Greco (1541-1614) (S 18-30), was confirmed by Mason (1999) and Meijer (2017).^[1] The former linked our drawing with the painting The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1598) (fig.), one of six large canvases by Maganza in the church of San Gaetano in Brescia, still in situ in the presbytery near the high altar together with the companion painting The Flight into Egypt, also by him.^[2] Our drawing is a preliminary study for the figure of Joseph, seated at lower left, gathering water from a stream with a nap, while looking up to the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child sitting on a rock, who are being served by three angels plucking fruit from the trees. The design was faithfully transferred to the painting, though without squaring (never practised by Maganza), and executed with only a minor deviation in the position of the left hand holding the nap.

To judge by the incomplete drawings of a penitent St Jerome on both sides, the Rotterdam sheet was originally larger, but for some reason substantially cropped at the bottom and somewhat less at the left. The three figures are typical of Maganza’s style and technique, a pen drawing executed in curving lines over a quickly sketched underdrawing, without hatching for interior modelling, and, in the main drawing only, some limited shading with two or three touches of the brush on Joseph’s garment. The two drawings of St Jerome belong to a small group depicting the meditating saint, referred to by Mason (1999), also including our drawing S 28, which by contrast is much heavier in execution.^[3]