Description: Numbered at lower left in pen and brown ink: 234 (Sparre)

Draft for a composition, with "pentimenti" that are particularly evident in the kneeling figure in the left foreground. Motifs are repeated in the verso's cut off figures, which presumably are studies for the same composition. The archtitecture is evidently a part of the background.

The drawing, with an old attribution to Raphael, has been judged very differently. Fischel found a resemblance in the subject to other compositions by Perugino. The manner recalls sketches for a "Birth of the Virgin" in the Uffizi in Florence and for the predella of the alterpiece for Santa Mari Nuova in Fano that Perugino painted around 1497. Part of that work has traditionally been attributed to  Raphael, and the drawing has been assigned to him as well as to Perugino: the matter was widely discussed in the 1980s. In a recent review, Ferino Pagden, like many others, considers that the hand is considerably more experienced than Raphael's. Perhaps  Raphael's youth (he was only 14 in 1497) is the strongest argument in favour of Perugino. In that case, our drawing should also go to Perugino.

A quite new approach is introduced by William M. Griswold who compares our drawing with sheets by Piero di Cosimo such as the study in the Uffizi for his "Visitation with Saints Anthony Abbot and Nicolas of Bari" and the Morgan Library "Stigmatization of Saint Francis" as well as a group of drawings, which has not been universally accepted as the work of Piero di Cosimo including three studies for an "Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple" and a sketch of the "Adoration of the Shepherds". Griswold further compares our sheet with a drawing in the Albertina of the "Adoration of the Child". He is convinced that our sheet is by the same hand as these studies and points at a number of characteristic features such as the scratchiness and density of the pen work, the combination of straight and diagonal hatching lines, the facial types and the vigorous contrapposto of the figures. [Bjurström, It. Drawings, cat. no. 1082;  also see: Bjurström, It. Drawings, cat. no. 401]

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Pietro Perugino | Herdarnas tillbedjan | Nationalmuseum