Group of Four Figures, Three-Quarter Length. Verso: Two Sketches of the Head of a Woman Turned to the Left, Seen from the Back

This study has been connected with Parmigianino’s drawing of the Marriage of the Virgin, now in Chatsworth, which was engraved by Jacopo Caraglio around 1526.¹ The final composition includes a figure, behind the Virgin at upper right, who folds her hands across her chest like the figure in the right foreground of the Morgan study. Additionally, in both the Chatsworth drawing and the engraving, a prominent figure in the left middle ground turns her head at an angle much like the sketches on the verso of the Morgan sheet. A similarly turned head reoccurs in a small sketch in the British Museum and in another compositional drawing for the Marriage of the Virgin, now in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.² Two further drawings in the Morgan’s collection relate to the engraved composition.³

Footnotes:

1. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, inv. 339; Jaffé 1994, 244, no. 677. For the print, see The Illustrated Bartsch 28: 77, no. 1.
2. British Museum, London, inv. 1910-2-12-34; Popham 1971, 1: 99, no. 218. École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, inv. 223; Popham 1971, 1: 166, no. 521.
3. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. I, 46b and I, 48.