Circle of PERINO DEL VAGA
The Holy Family
Inscribed on reverse: di perino dal Vago
Pen and brown ink with wash on paper 8 ⅜ x 5 ⅞ inches (213 x 149 mm)
Provenance:
A.M. Zanetti (his collector’s mark on verso)
Lord Brownlow
Arturo Cuellar, Zürich
Private Collection, New York, 1986–2022
Literature:
Charlotte von Prybam-Gladona, Unbekannte Zeichnungen alter Meister aus euorpäischem Privatbesitz, Munich, 1969, p. 35, plate 40.
Jean Cadogan, Wadsworth Atheneum Paintings II, Italy and Spain Fourteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, Hartford, 1991, pp. 115, 116n.6.
Tatyana K. Kustodieva, Italian Painting; Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (The Hermitage: Catalogue of European Painting), Florence, 1994, pp. 448-449.
This highly-finished drawing is either the final preparatory study for or a ricordo of a composition known from at least eight painted versions, of which arguably the finest is a panel now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (Fig. 1). Other treatments of the composition are in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford; in the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah; and in private collections in Washington, Palermo, Paris, and Rome. The attribution of the various paintings has ranged widely: from Salviati to Perino del Vaga, to Jacopino del Conte, Siciolante da Sermoneta, Vasari, Pagni da Pescia, and Nosadella. The earliest known attribution significantly refers to the Prado version, which entered the collection of Philip II at the Escorial in 1574, as “by the hand of Salviati the Roman, painter to the King of France.” Whether there exists or existed an earlier prototype, either unidentified or lost, is unknown. What is evident is that the composition achieved notable currency in its own time.
Fig. 1. The Holy Family, The Prado, Madrid.
The present drawing has been given in the past to Perino del Vaga, and bears an old collector’s inscription to him on the verso, but an attribution to Francesco Salviati should also be considered. Salviati’s work in the 1540s is heavily indebted to Perino and this is evident in both the artist’s pictures and the few extant drawings of the period. There is much confusion between works of the two painters at this moment, but despite the evident connections to Perino’s physiognomic types, the present drawing is characterized by a dynamic composition, graphic technique, and echoes of Parmigianino that point to Salviati’s authorship.