Two Studies of a Putto and a Study of a Seated Boy with a Putto. Verso: Studies of a Woman's Head, a Child and a Fence

The present drawing remains unconnected to any known work by Parmigianino. The sheet has some similarity to another drawing in the Morgan’s collection that is connected with the young artist’s frescoes at Fontanellato.¹ However, the slightly more elongated dimensions of the figures supports a slightly later date of just before or after the artist’s departure for Rome in 1524, as suggested by A. E. Popham.²

The Morgan sheet may be connected with two drawings, one in the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, the other in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, which originally formed part of the same sheet.³ On the verso of the Harvard sheet, Parmigianino studied music-making angels, similar to those appearing in the upper left corner of a drawing, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, of the Adoration of the Shepherds securely dated to the artist’s Roman period.⁴ Konrad Oberhuber and Dean Walker speculated that the Morgan studies might have been made in connection with a composition of the Madonna and Child or a Holy Family with the Infant St. John.⁵

Footnotes:

1. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. I, 49.
2. Popham 1971, 1: 225, no. 788.
3. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, inv. 792a-b; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, inv. 1932.313. See Gnann 2007, 1: 431, nos. 515, 516.
4. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 46.80.3; Gnann 2007, 1: 430-31, no. 510.
5. Washington and New York 1973-74, 69-71, no. 57.