Half-Length Figure of a Male Caryatid Supporting Springing of a Vault. Verso: Fragment of a Drapery Study?

The drawing was not included in A. E. Popham’s catalog of Parmigianino’s drawings, David Ekserdjian’s supplement or Achim Gnann’s more recent catalog.¹ The present study it is close in subject matter to drawings for the frescoes of the ceiling of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma. In particular, it is worth noting a certain similarity in pose to the Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law on the North wall of the vault, for which there is a sheet of sketches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a more finished study in the Louvre, Paris.²

Footnotes:

1. Popham 1971, Ekserdjian 1999, Gnann 2007.
2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 62.135; Gnann 2007, 1: 476, no. 782. Louvre, Paris, inv. 6374; Gnann 2007, 1: 478, no. 793.