- Museum number
- 1860,0616.72
- Description
-
A kneeling Virgin; whole-length, slightly to right, looking down to right, hands held together in prayer
Metalpoint, with grey-brown wash, heightened with white (partly oxidised), with lines indented, on grey-brown prepared paper
- Production date
- 1478-1513 (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 264 millimetres
-
Width: 197 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Van Marle first suggested that this was by Antonio da Viterbo, known as Pastura but Popham and Pouncey preferred a more generic attribution to the School of Pietro Perugino in the 1950 catalogue. Francis Russell connected the drawing to the figure of the Virgin in a tondo formerly in the Rospigliosi collection (Russell fig. 1; F. Todini, 'La Pittura Umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento', Milan, 1989, II, fig. 1247) which, because of its similarity to Pastura's 'Nativity' in Viterbo (Todini fig. 1245), he attributes to the same artist. The drawing does not correspond exactly with the painted fugure and cannot be a copy after it, and is therefore most likely a study for the tondo. A similar figure occurs in a painting in Tours which was formerly attributed to Eusebio di San Giorgio, but is now generally agreed not to be by him. Ferino Pagden in the 1982 Uffizi catalogue concurs with the attribution to Pastura.
Lit.: A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, no. 208 (with previous literature); F. Russell, 'A Drawing by Antonio da Viterbo', "Master Drawings", XII, Summer 1974, pp. 165-6, fig. 34; S. Ferino Pagden, in exhib. cat., Florence, Uffizi, 'Disegni Umbri del Rinascimento da Perugino a Raffaello', 1982, under no. 9
Popham & Pouncey 1950
Attributed in the Woodburn Sale Catalogue to Perugino and by Van Marle (loc. cit.) to Antonio da Viterbo. The latter attribution has certainly something to recommend it, but we doubt whether this rather crude provincial painter would have drawn in this way and it seems better to class it as School of Perugino, which is in the broader sense correct. There is, according to Van Marle, an inferior version of the drawing in the Louvre. The figure of the Madonna in a 'tondo' in the Museum of Tours also corresponds with the drawing. This 'tondo', mentioned by Van Marle (xiv, p. 437), is attributed, for no reason that we can see, to Eusebio da San Giorgio.
Literature: Van Marle, xv, p. 332, fig. 203.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1860
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1860,0616.72
