Daniele Ricciarelli, called Daniele da Volterra

A rare example of a large scale compositional study by Daniele da Volterra, this drawing, previously unattributed, bears an old attribution to Bronzino, most surely due to its polished and meticulous finish. 

In his drawings of this type, often representing, in black or red chalk, large scale figures, Daniele is primarily concerned with shapes and volumes accentuated by the sharp contrast of light and shadow. The drawings are characterized by their subtle and methodical handling, with delicate and minute hatchings alternating with longer parallel strokes, sometimes drawn on top of the more delicate touches and around the figures, to define and enhance the three-dimensional and sculptural impact of these images. His technique gives softer and more suffused results when using red chalk, like here, rather than black, which does not permit the same subtlety of nuance.  Both the scale and the tall narrow proportions of this sheet are similar to several other large figure studies by Daniele, in red or black chalk. 

On the present sheet the light falls strongly from the left, enhancing the voluminous and heavy draped cloth which, covering the Madonna's plaited hair, falls down behind her back to create two large folds to the side of her right hip. These, like waves, return to wrap her legs down to the feet, with several elegantly cascading folds, casting strong shadows to the right, clarifying form and volume as in a sculpture. 

Totally Michelangelesque in its grandeur and monumentality, the present drawing must date to the 1550s, after the artist's work, notably the Assumption of the Virgin, in the della Rovere Chapel in SS. Trinità dei Monti in Rome, which occupied him from 1548 and was still incomplete by 1553. Another Michelangelesque study in black chalk for a figure of the Madonna, now in the Louvre, related to that commission, makes an interesting comparison with the present sheet, whose complex rendering of the draperies and intense chiaroscuro result in a more dramatic and majestic effect.¹ Daniele's works from around 1550 also include the decorations for the Sala di Cleopatra in the Belvedere in the Vatican.²

Most of the artist’s surviving drawings, including several in red chalk, relate, however, to his earlier work, in particular to the Orsini Chapel in the church of SS. Trinità dei Monti, and especially to Daniele's famous Deposition, executed in the mid-1540s, the only fresco of the entire decoration to have survived.³ The Deposition was transferred to canvas in the early 19th century and is now located in the second chapel to the left. 

The iconography of this sheet is also a matter of great rarity and interest. A Zodiac is visible behind the Madonna and Child, who stands on a globe while resting his left hand on a transversal cross. On the globe it is possible to discern the shape of the Italian peninsula. The Madonna, her head in profile to the right while talking to the Child, indicates with both hands towards the Zodiac, which alludes to Christ's role as ''chronocrator'': Lord of Cosmic Time. This subject is very seldom painted and its presence here must reflect the commission of a cultivated and refined patron particularly interested in astrology. The signs of Scorpio and Sagittarius can be easily detected to the left of the Madonna. Moreover she rests her right foot on a cloud over a crescent moon. The intriguing historical relationship between science and Christianity was perceived differently at different times, and not surprisingly was also often seen as a controversial combination in the context of the visual arts. Therefore, we can easily understand that this rare subject must have come from a specific patron and for a special commission, possibly never executed. There is no mention of such a subject in the life of Daniele da Volterra in Vasari's Vite.  It appears that the only known painted examples of this subject are the two versions by Cosmè Tura, done for private devotion, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice and in Palazzo Colonna, Rome.⁴

During the last decade of his career, Daniele increasingly turned to sculpture, though it is wrong to assume he abandoned his activity as a painter. The very sculptural rendering of the draperies is a defining quality of this drawing, and also extremely characteristic of Daniele are the tapered, knotted fingers and the undulating skin of the palm (in particular in the Madonna's right hand), which reveals the artist's difficulties in articulating the movements of the hands.⁵ 

Daniele' s career of more than thirty years in Rome, and his close relationship with Michelangelo, was transforming and enlightening for an ambitious and very hard working artist. Vasari, in his life of Daniele, noted his disciplined and lengthy efforts to finish certain commissions. The meticulous and delicate execution of the present sheet is witness to the artist's precision, as described by Vasari. His art, so prized by his contemporaries, left a considerable mark on other talented painters of the Cinquecento who absorbed his artistic vocabulary, for example Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527-1596) and Siciolante da Sermoneta (1521-1575).

The illegible minute calligraphy in red chalk at the top of the sheet is not dissimilar to the indecipherable inscriptions in Italian, in pen and ink, across the sheet with a figure study for the Deposition Orsini now in the Louvre (see note 3, inv. no. 1511).

1. Paris, Louvre, inv. no. 1520: for an image see, exhib. cat., Daniele da Volterra, amico di Michelangelo, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 2004, pp. 106-107, no. 25

2. Teresa Pugliatti, Giulio Mazzoni e la decorazione a Roma nella cerchia di Daniele da Volterra,Rome 1984, pp. 151-166

3. Paris, Louvre, inv. nos.: 1499, 1506, 1507, 1508, 1510, 1511, 1523, 1526.

For images see respectively, op. cit.,no. 19, p. 95; no. 10, p. 75; under no. 10 p. 74, fig. 40; under no. 9, p. 72, fig. 39; under no. 9, p. 72, fig. 38; no. 9, p. 73; no. 18, p. 93; no. 17, p. 91. Also noteworthy is an earlier black chalk drawing in the Uffizi (inv. no. 11926 F), a St. John the Baptist, whose classic facial features and eyes are conceived in a very similar way to the Madonna in the present sheet. See, op cit, no. 3, p. 60, reproduced p. 61 

4. Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia, inv. no. 628; Roma, Palazzo Colonna; see S.J. Campbell, Cosmè Tura, New Haven and London 1997, p. 147, reproduced pl. 11, p. 147, fig. 113

5. Especially the positioning of the thumb, a peculiarity that can be observed in several of his hands