Madonna with Child and Joseph

Author: Klazina Botke

This drawing probably came down to us from the estate of Pierre Crozat (1665-1740). At 19,000 sheets he had one of the largest private collections of his day. The works were numbered, often in the margin at lower right, as is the case here.^[1] The study then passed to the Brussels artist Emile Wauters (1846-1933), another keen collector of Italian sixteenth-century drawings. In 1913 Frederic Lees published the finest works from his collection, including this one, which he attributed to Antonio Correggio (Antonio Allegri, c.1489-1534) of Parma.^[2] It and two other drawings then entered the Koenigs Collection as works by Correggio.^[3] However, after having visited the print room in 1962 Philip Pouncey suggested that the study could be by Federico Barocci (c.1535-1612), a hypothesis that David Lachenmann downgraded to 'school of Barocci' in 2004.^[4]

The drawing depicts an episode from the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. On the way back to Palestine, Jesus miraculously caused water to appear, quenching the thirst of the Holy Family and their animals.^[5] The Virgin is seated with the Christ Child on her lap and is holding a dish. Joseph is standing to her right and is pouring water into the dish as Jesus blesses it. The story is depicted by both Correggio and Barocci in respectively their Madonna della scodella (c.1528-1535) and Madonna delle ciliegie (1570-1673).^[6] The composition in the Rotterdam drawing clearly differs from both those works, but the study does show that the artist was still searching for the figures’ correct poses and positions. That is typical of Barocci’s working procedure, for he repeatedly experimented with similar forms and figures on a single sheet. Even so, an attribution to the master himself is doubtful, mainly because the Virgin does not have the characteristic drop-shaped face that we know from the artist’s other studies.^[7]

On the verso there is a seated figure in black chalk.