Beskrivning: Se beskrivning i engelska versionen

Description: Irregularly cut; a large section of the upper left-hand corner and a smaller part upper right cut away. Laid away.

Provenance: Prince Charles de Ligne (Bartsch 1794, p. 454, no. 95: unknown) ; Herzog Albert von Sachsen-Teschen ; Count J.G: De la Gardie (Lugt 2722a) ; Gift to the museum in 1973

This drawing was identified in 1949 by Tietse as a preparatory study for St. John the Evangelist n Savoldo´s painting of "The Transfiguration" in the Pitti Gallery (temporarily Uffizi), Florence. The sheet gives a good impression of the monumentality in this artist´s style, his command of the anatomical structure behind the rich folds of the dress. 

The drawing is important as one of the three with direct links to Savoldo´s paintings. They have been studied by Creighton Gilbert, who considers that they were done after the artist had executed an initial painted version of the composition - there are real differences, the painter beginning to draw not for creating, but for revising. Consequently Gilbert considers that this drawing served as a basis for the workshop copy of The Transfiguration that is in the Ambrosiana, Milan, where the figure of the Bapist is indeed closer to our sheet than this is to the earlier version.

The same applies to another study that is connected directly with this composition, namely the "Head of an apostle" in the Uffizi, which Gilbert interprets as supporting his theory about our drawing: The copy is faithful throughout and presupposes that the artist had access to Savoldo´s original painting. But at times the copy departs from the model and therefore, he argues, the drawings were understood as revisions of the painting.

But the workshop copy is a small painting, 21x27 cm, the whole composition being no bigger than our study of a detail. It seems conceivable that the copyist felt more tied to the drawn sketches at his disposal than Savoldo did when he started work on his large canvas. This would suffice to explain the discrepancies noted by Gilbert and would place our drawing earlier than the original version. [Bjurström, It. Drawings, no 246]

Evangelisten Johannes