- Museum number
- 1895,0915.593
- Description
-
The Marriage of the Virgin, after Perugino; whole-length figures of Joseph at left and the Virgin at r, the High Priest at centre joining their hands
Metalpoint, heightened with white, on grey-brown prepared paper, with lines indented
- Production date
- 1465-1523 (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 283 millimetres
-
Width: 207 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- A copy after the group in the 'Marriage of the Virgin' painted around 1504 for the cathedral of Perugia, and now at Caen. Berenson's attribution of the painting to Lo Spagna probably explains why Fischel catalogued the BM drawing as a work by an assistant of Lo Spagna. Popham and Pouncey listed it as a copy after Perugino, and suggested the same artist might have been responsible for 1895,0915.596 (Popham and Pouncey no. 203). Ferino Pagden tentatively proposed that another drawing after the Caen painting in the Fondazione Horne, Florence (5883) might be by the same hand.
Lit.: J.C. Robinson, 'Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq.', London, 1876, no. 156 (as Perugino); O. Fischel. 'Die Zeichnungen der Umbrer', Berlin, 1917, no. 142, p. 221 (as assistant of Lo Spagna); A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 204 (with previous literature); P. Scarpellini, 'Perugino', Milan, 1984, p. 254, fig. 217; S. Ferino Pagden, in exhib. cat., Florence, Uffizi, 'Disegni Umbri del Rinascimento da Perugino a Raffaello', 1982, under no. 33
Popham & Pouncey 1950
The drawing corresponds exactly with the group in the 'Sposalizio', now at Caen (K. der K. 126), the execution of which for the Duomo of Perugia it was decided to entrust to Perugino on 11 April 1499; the picture was still unfinished on 26 Dec. 1503. It has been attributed by Berenson to Lo Spagna and this presumably explains Fischel's view that the present drawing is by an assistant of Lo Spagna. It is, of course, much smaller in scale. Robinson regarded it as Perugino's original study, but it is clearly a copy.
Literature: JCR 156; Grosvenor Gallery Winter Exhibition, 1877/8, no. 597; Catalogue descriptif des dessins . . . exposés à l'École des Beaux-Arts, 1879, no. 98; P. de Chennevières, Les dessins de maîtres anciens exposés à l'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1880, p. 20; Fischel, Umbrer, p. 221, no. 142.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1879 May-Jun, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 'Des Dessins de Maîtres Anciens', no. 98
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.593