Pietro Buonaccorsi, called Perino del Vaga

J.A. Gere, Drawings by Raphael and his Circle from British and North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1987, pp. 247-8, under cat. no. 76, fig. 76c;
E. Parma et al, Perino del Vaga, tra Raffaello e Michelangelo, Milan 2001, p. 267

Framed in a simple wooden gilded frame. Window mounted. There are some small light red spot stains at each corner apart from the upper right, which has two small light brown stains . All are outside the main drawn image. There is what appears to be a diagonal tear at the upper left, which again only affects the image slightly. A small hole is caused as a result, although both this and the tear have been neatly repaired from the verso.
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This is one of a group of ten known drawings made by Perino in preparation for six circular rock crystal plaques engraved with subjects from the Life of Christ.  Made by the medallist and gem-cutter Giovanni Bernardi (1496-1553) the plaques were commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to adorn a pair of candlesticks,¹ which he donated to the Capitolo di San Pietro in 1582, and are now in the Vatican Treasury.  Three of the plaques by Bernardi are mounted in the candlesticks as they appear now: The Centurion asking Christ to heal his son, The Pool of Bethesda and The Resurection of Lazarus.  Of the remaining three that originally would have joined them, two others have been identified: The Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple and The Transfiguration, which are mounted in a silver cassetta now in Copenhagen. The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, for which the present sheet was drawn, is yet to be found.² 

In his life of Bernardi, Vasari does not mention Perino's involvement, but lists the different subjects which the plaques represented: '...nel primo è il Centurione che prega Cristo che sani il figliolo; nel secondo la Probatica Piscina; nel terzo la Trasfigurazione in sul monte Tabor, nel quarto è il miracolo dei cinque pani e due pesci; nel quinto quando cacciò i venditori dal tempio e nell'ultimo la Resurrezione di Lazzaro, che tutti furono rarissimi.'  Interestingly, the order in which Vasari places each plaque corresponds with the numbering inscribed on the freer, sketchier designs such as the present sheet, alongside the Expulsion of the Money-Changers in the Nationalmusem, Stockholm, and the Centurion asking Christ to heal his son in the National Gallery, Prague.³  These drawings, executed in pen and brown ink over black chalk, appear to be Perino's first versions, as each is parallel to a more finished sheet, worked up in brown wash and heightened with white.  The drawing with which the present sheet corresponds is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.⁴ 

John Gere suggests that the designs were adapted from rectangular frescoes (destroyed in the 19th Century) representing the same episodes from the Life of Christ which Perino had painted on the side walls of the Massimi Chapel in S. Trinità del Monti in 1538, some months after his return to Rome.  According to Vasari, these were much admired by Cardinal Farnese, whose patronage Perino had been attempting to gain to enable his re-establishment in the city.  He must have ordered the designs to be made shortly after the frescoes were completed, for in a letter dated 29 July 1539, Bernardi informs the Cardinal: ''ho fatto tutti li cristalli de li candelieri''.⁵

Although the monogram AR in the upper right quarter of the sheet has not been identified, it is interesting to note that a single letter R is inscribed, in the same hand and ink, and in the same place, on the freely drawn Expulsion of the Money-Changers in the Nationalmusem, Stockholm.  

1. J.A. Gere, op. cit., p. 247
2. E. Parma, op. cit., p. 266
3. Ibid.
4. Gere, op.cit., cat. no. 77 
5. Ibid. p. 249