Study of a Woman Sitting on the Ground

Author: Surya Stemerding

This drawing by Annibale Carracci is one of the few surviving preliminary studies for St Roch Giving Alms (fig.), a painting now in Dresden.^[1] Commissioned in 1587-88 by the Confraternity of San Rocco for the Confraternity’s oratory in Bologna, it would become the largest and most complex work in Carracci’s oeuvre. Eight years after Annibale had received the commission, he left for Rome. Since the painting was still incomplete at that time, he suggested that his cousin Lodovico (1555-1619) should finish it, but his patrons did not agree. Annibale was obliged to return from Rome to fulfil his commitment.^[2] The work was completed in 1595.

It emerges from the underdrawing in the painting and early prints after the recently recovered modello^[3] that Annibale had conceived the composition differently. He had had a landscape in mind for the background, but in the end used architectural elements instead. Two older men were placed beside the girl on the far left of the scene.^[4] The greatest change, however, was that he executed the whole composition in reverse. Technical examination of the underdrawing revealed that the artist had already transferred half of the composition on to the canvas in accordance with the design before changing the orientation.^[5]

The preliminary study in Rotterdam must date from this later stage since it is in the same direction as the painted scene. It is a study for the woman who appears prominently in the foreground, looking up obliquely at the saint and pointing to her empty begging bowl with her left hand. The drawing is not just a study of her position, it is also a fairly detailed working out of the folds of her garment, which are taken over into the painted composition almost exactly. The meaning of the white cloth rolled up under the woman’s right knee is not entirely clear. In the drawing it is roughly indicated with a circle, so it was clearly conceived beforehand. Such a conspicuous pictorial element front and centre of the painting is probably a crucial part of the iconography. It might be the swaddled body of a child who had died of the plague, the fate of most of the figures in the picture.