In an essay entitled `Mysterious Parmigianino’ Sylvie Beguin included a description of the group of studies by Parmigianino  which were first referred to by A.E Popham as the `genre’ drawings. Beguin points out in these drawings an `accuracy of attitude, gesture and expression’ and an `innate sense of observation, without artifice, nor concession’. She describes Parmigianino’s `investigation of truth’ as prevailing `over his search for style, thus anticipating the spirit and creations of the seventeenth century’ and asserts that `Few draughtsmen in his day reached for such grandeur, such utter simplicity ..’ and that `no artist prior to the Carraccis could rival Parmigianino on this level.’ (1)

The present sheet has exactly these qualities of simplicity and focus. The young girl of the recto is relaxed and natural in her pose; her left arm balances over the edge of the book which she supports in her lap, the hand hanging limply, while her right arm secures the book from slipping. She sits somewhat hunched, with her legs apart, appearing to smile, perhaps turning to listen. She may have seated herself to read by a high window, as the light falls strongly from the left, onto her hair, her chest, the folds of her sleeves and the book itself. The drawing on the verso calls to mind depictions of the Virgin and Child but this study has a particular intimacy not usually seen in Parmigianino’s gracious and refined paintings of the subject. With all the directness of a genre work, the child is seen `close up’, snuggled against its mother’s breast, perhaps sated from feeding. The mother tenderly lifts the child’s arm, with an action suggesting she has just moved the hand to allow the child to see and be seen.  Though delicate in scale and sensibility, both recto and verso are drawn with a certain robustness suggesting speed of execution and, indeed, lack of artifice.  This remarkable drawing has only recently come to light again since Rosaline Bacou took the opportunity to publish both recto and verso in her 1971 review of Popham’s monograph.  It is a striking example of one of Parmigianino’s most fascinating aspects as a draughtsman which, having slipped out of view, has not been discussed in the more recent literature

Since the publication of Popham’s magnum opus in 1971, writers on Parmigianino’s drawings have analysed, and added to, the genre drawings or studies from life, which Popham grouped together. He believed these works to date from circa 1524, the period of Parmigianino’s stay at Fontanellato where he painted frescoes in the Rocca Sanvitale for his patron Galeazzo Sanvitale (2). Famous examples of these drawings are the Woman Seated on the ground Nursing a child, formerly at Chatsworth, the Seated Woman Asleep in the Courtauld Institute (used by Parmigianino for his the etching known as Saint Thais), the Seated Man and Woman in the Fritz Lugt Collection and the rich red chalk study of the Seated Pilgrim in the Ashmolean (3). Though the medium of these drawings varies (some have white heightening, others are in black chalk) the approach is generally the same: tender and intensely observed but drawn with gentle energy. If the present sheet is linked with the two other studies of seated women mentioned above then another likely date is slightly later, post 1524 and during Parmigianino’s Roman period. David Ekserdjian highlights a connection between these `early studies’ and  the informal drawings of the those artists working in the circle of Raphael, and particularly with Polidoro da Caravaggio (4). The Correggesque amplitude of form and the large hands and eyes seen on both recto and verso of the present sheet do, however, argue for the earlier dating, echoing drawings and paintings of the Parmese period and the frescoes of S. Giovanni Evangelista in particular. Parmigianino received his commission to work in the church in 1522 and, assisting Correggio with the pendentives beneath the central dome during 1523, he clearly had access to the master’s drawings. (5) The figures of SS. Apollonia and Lucy which he painted in the first nave chapel have a noticeably similar spirit to that seen in the drawing of the seated girl with a book. 

Given the range of styles and mediums seen within the broader group of Parmigianino’s genre studies it could be assumed that these surviving drawings date from various periods and, indeed, that this looking at life around him played a constant role in Parmigianino’s artistic process. Though most of the chalk genre drawings appear not to relate to existing paintings (a characteristic which contributes to the difficulty of allotting specific dates), some examples can be cited of genre-type drawings seeming to fit into a chain of thought leading to a finished and, in the end, more typically courtly work. Parmigianino may in fact have been working on ideas for a `Madonna del Latte’ in around 1523, possibly inspired by Correggio’s half-length painting of the subject, which is now in Budapest. (6) He then appears to have returned to the theme in the 1530s; Popham published a drawing in the Galleria Nazionale, Parma, of the Madonna feeding the Child, with St Jerome lying in the foreground, and described it as an early stage in the evolution of the Madonna of the Long Neck. David Ekserdjian returns this idea to note that the Parma drawing and two other preparatory studies for the altarpiece seem to `suggest that Parmigianino experimented with the idea of turning the picture into a monumental Madonna del Latte’. (7) There are also a number of red chalk studies of the Madonna and Child related to the painting in Dresden known as the Madonna of the Rose. The picture dates from Parmigianino’s Bolognese period circa 1527-30 and the drawings show the artist working towards the composition in a playful, observational manner. As David Ekserdjian pointed out, studies in which the Virgin is shown rolling up her sleeve to bathe her wriggling child are transformed in the painting into `a kind of abstract encapsulation of elegance’ ..(8) Rather more of the late genre drawings appear to be done in pen an ink and often show Parmigianino looking at details of the landscape and at creatures, at details of plants, at dogs and crayfish and crabs. Many of these studies were then absorbed into the decorative background of the Steccata ceiling decoration. Parmigianino’s troubled project in the Church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma is profusely filled with natural observation: of fruit and flowers, and marine creatures as well as of books and lamps and vessels. 

A. E Popham listed and described the main collectors and collections of Parmigianino’s drawings. Jonathan Richardson Snr (1665-1741) owned, by Popham’s estimation, at least 67 drawings by the artist; some few of which (perhaps around ten) appear to have belonged to Nicolas Lanière and, or to Sir Peter Lely, but for the majority of which no clear path has been traced. The present drawing may have left England at the time of the posthumous dispersal of Richardson’s great collection at the sale in 1747. This took place in London over 18 days and the pages of the catalogue are tantalizingly scattered with group lots of Parmigianino’s drawings. (9) A. Moriau, formerly a captain in the Belgian army, was an avid and determined collector. He wrote the preface for the sale of his collection which he described as the fruit of twenty five years of travelling and research, of study in both public and private collections, of work only limited by the demands of health. His sale took place in Paris on 11 and 12 March 1858 and is described by Lugt as a rich collection of works, illustrated with 15 engraved plates, including drawings by Perugino, Raphael, Michelangelo, Correggio, Rembrandt and Van Dyck (10).

Lugt describes Moriau’s mark as being found on the versos of his drawings which shows that he considered the study of the mother and child as the recto, as Jonathan Richardson did also.

Notes

1.         See Sylvie Beguin, Mario di Giampaolo and Mary Vaccaro, Parmigianino, The Drawings, Turin and London 2000, p.12.

2.         A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino, New Haven and London, 1971, vol.I, p.61, under cat.60.

3.         Carmen C. Bambach, Hugo Chapman, Martin Clayton and George R. Goldner, Correggio and Parmigianino, London 2000,   cats.70, 72 and 71 and Achim Gnann, Parmigianino, Petersberg 2007, cats. 177, 173, 143 and 640 respectively  (the latter dated to Parmigianino’s Bolognese period, 1527-9).  Sylvie Beguin made a similar link, see above Loc. Cit..

4.         See David Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, New Haven and London, 2006, p.182

5.         See Martin Clayton in exhibition catalogue, Correggio and Parmigianino, op.cit.,p.78, cat.37 and David Ekserdjian, op. cit., 2006, pp.22-23.

6.         See David Ekserdjian, Correggio, New Haven and London 1997,  pp.145-6, fig.162. 

7.         See Popham, op. cit., vol. I, cat.553 and vol.III, pl.346 and David Ekserdjian, `Unpublished Drawings by Parmigianino, Towards a Supplement to Popham’s catalogue raisonné’, Apollo Magazine, August 1999, p.38, under cat.67. 

8.         See, Gnann, op. cit., 2007, cats.709-714 and D. Ekserdjian, op. cit, August 1999, p.27, cat.48 `Parmigianino’s first conception ..involved the Virgin rolling up her sleeve and preparing to give her wriggling son a bath’ .. and Ekserdjian, op. cit., 2006, p.78.

9.         For this description and an analysis of the main provenances for Parmigianino see, Popham, op.cit., vol.I, pp.32-34. 

10.       See, Frits Lugt, Les Marques de Collections de dessins d’estampes, …, Amsteram 1921,  under no.1829.