Madonna with Child and Joseph

Circle of: Barocci (Federico Fiori) (in circa 1560-1600)

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Specifications

Title	Madonna with Child and Joseph
Material and technique	Black chalk, heightened with white, on grey-brown paper (recto), black chalk (verso)
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 337 mm Width 230 mm
Artists	Circle of: Barocci (Federico Fiori) Previously attributed: Correggio (Antonio Allegri)
Accession number	I 28 recto (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1560-1600
Inscriptions	'36' (below right, pen and black ink), 'fra Batholomeo' (verso, below right, black chalk)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Provenance	(?) Pierre Crozat (1665-1740, L.3612, no. 36), Paris; his sale, Paris (Mariette) 10.04-13.05.1741; - ; Emile Wauters (1846-1933, L.911), Paris; his sale, Amsterdam (Muller) 15-16.06.1926, lot 3 (Correggio, Fl 725 to Cassirer); Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1926; D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Lees 1913, p. 41, fig. 56 (Correggio)
Material	Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique Black chalk > Chalk > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Technique	Highlight > Painting technique > Technique > Material and technique
Geographical origin	Italy > Southern Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Klazina Botke

This drawing probably came down to us from the estate of Pierre Crozat (1665-1740). At 19,000 sheets he had one of the largest private collections of his day. The works were numbered, often in the margin at lower right, as is the case here.^[1]The study then passed to the Brussels artist Emile Wauters (1846-1933), another keen collector of Italian sixteenth-century drawings. In 1913 Frederic Lees published the finest works from his collection, including this one, which he attributed to Antonio Correggio (Antonio Allegri, c.1489-1534) of Parma.^[2]It and two other drawings then entered the Koenigs Collection as works by Correggio.^[3]However, after having visited the print room in 1962 Philip Pouncey suggested that the study could be by Federico Barocci (c.1535-1612), a hypothesis that David Lachenmann downgraded to 'school of Barocci' in 2004.^[4]

The drawing depicts an episode from the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. On the way back to Palestine, Jesus miraculously caused water to appear, quenching the thirst of the Holy Family and their animals.^[5]The Virgin is seated with the Christ Child on her lap and is holding a dish. Joseph is standing to her right and is pouring water into the dish as Jesus blesses it. The story is depicted by both Correggio and Barocci in respectively their Madonna della scodella (c.1528-1535) and Madonna delle ciliegie (1570-1673).^[6] The composition in the Rotterdam drawing clearly differs from both those works, but the study does show that the artist was still searching for the figures’ correct poses and positions. That is typical of Barocci’s working procedure, for he repeatedly experimented with similar forms and figures on a single sheet. Even so, an attribution to the master himself is doubtful, mainly because the Virgin does not have the characteristic drop-shaped face that we know from the artist’s other studies.^[7]

On the verso there is a seated figure in black chalk.

Footnotes

^[1]Cordelia Hattori distinguished five separate hands matching the five people responsible for numbering the sheets. Hattori 1997-98, pp. 179-208; Hattori 2007, p. 41; Lugt Online, L. 3612.

^[2]Lees 1913, p. 41.

^[3]See Lütjens c.1928-35.

^[4]Philip Pouncey note, dated April 1957: ‘Seems Barocci. Confirmed in May 1962’; correspondence with Françoise Devaux, November 2019. Lachenmann: remark on the old passe-partout in 2004.

^[5]Pseudo-Matthew, ch. 20.

^[6]Correggio’s painting is now in Parma, Galleria Nazionale di Parma, inv. GN350; see also Gould 1972. There are preliminary studies for the work in Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1956 F, and Washington, National Gallery, inv. 1991.217.6.a; Hodge 1973. Barocci’s scene, of which he may have painted four versions, in the Vatican Museums.

^[7]See, for example, the preliminary studies for the Madonna delle ciliegie in Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1416 E and 11461 F, and in the Goldman Collection; St. Louis/London 2012, no. 4.

Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600

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