Study for a Seated Sibyl

Author: Albert Elen

In 1519-24 Correggio painted a large series of fresco decorations in the newly built church of San Giovanni Evangelista for the Benedictine monks of Parma.^[1] He first painted the decorations in the main dome (over the crossing), the choir vault and the semidome of the choir apse. However, most of the latter, the multi-figured Coronation of the Virgin, was lost as early as 1587 when the church was enlarged, and was immediately replaced by a copy in situ.^[2] Eight preparatory drawings of the central scene survived, among them the only composition study, the sheet that is now in Rotterdam (see I 381).^[3] At the end of 1521 Correggio also received an order for the 60-metre frieze on the three walls of the nave, along with the pilasters and the pendentives of the main dome. The frieze frescoes must have been painted in the spring and summer of 1522. It is obvious from the stylistic differences that they were not executed by him but by assistants working to his designs. Several of the preparatory drawings for those decorations have survived, four of which are in Rotterdam. They are studies for some of the seated sibyls and prophets flanking the central scenes of sacrifice (I 288-291).^[4] Additionally, in 2022 a previously anonymous red chalk drawing in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was identified as a preliminary study for secondary figures in The Ascension of Christ fresco (I 429) in the main dome.

The continuous frieze decorations are situated above the six arches on either side of the nave, with one on the west wall. Each of the thirteen elongated compartments contains a central scene with a large group of figures standing around an altar, with a seated sibyl at far left and right and closed off with a prophet. Each of them holds a tablet with an abbreviated inscription in Latin or Greek. The subjects alternate between heathen and Jewish sacrificial offerings. Those compartments are separated from each other between the arches and above the pilasters by a standing scene of the same height with two full-length putti, most of them also holding a tablet.

There are extant preliminary drawings in red chalk of some of the flanking sibyls and prophets, including one each of the first, third, fourth and fifth compartments on the south wall.^[5] Those four small drawings, each of which was probably part of a larger sheet at one time, have been documented since the collection of Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), and are now in Rotterdam. On the verso of one of them (I 289 v) there is a study of a seated putto with a palm branch and a cardinal’s hat at top left in the fresco with Sts Jerome and Matthew on the south-eastern pendentive of the dome, which must therefore have been drawn before the other sheets.^[6] The verso of another drawing (I 288 v) has a sketch for an altar and a head, and may be related to the frieze decorations. The functionality of the drawings is evident from the fact that three of them are squared for transfer to scale to the cartoons (I 289, 290, 291). Since Correggio was a very busy artist and had to complete the frescoes quickly, in the warmer and more humid ‘fresco season’ from spring to autumn 1522, he left most of the execution to his assistants, especially the relatively unknown local artist Francesco Maria Rondani (1490-before 1557). That, though, is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the preliminary studies.^[7]