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Baccio della Porta, called Fra BARTOLOMMEO
Florence 1472-1517 Pian di Mugnone

A pupil of both Cosimo Rosselli and Domenico Ghirlandaio, he entered the Dominican Order in 1500. One of the prime leaders of the High Renaissance in Florence, his works display a harmonious calm and a profound piety.

Circle of Fra Bartolommeo

32

A kneeling woman, her right hand raised

Brush and grey-brown and pale ochre distemper, on paper tinted reddish brown. Framing line (partly trimmed) in pencil. Horizontal tears at left and right (repaired). Lined.

Lined with a sheet of paper tinted blue-green that is drawn with a shield or cartouche in pen and brown ink as well as some scribbles.

260 x 161 mm.

PROVENANCE: Odescalchi; acquired in 1790 (L. 2392).

INV. NO.: K IX 43.

EXHIBITION: Amsterdam, 1934, no. 480.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Berenson, 1938, II, p. 35, no. 390A; Van Regteren Altena, 1966, p. 47; Berenson, 1961, II, p. 65, no. 390 A-1*.



Van Regteren Altena (exh. Amsterdam, 1934) interpreted this as a study for the Virgin in her Coronation. The attribution to Fra Bartolommeo, proposed by the same author and affirmed by Berenson, was rejected by Chris Fischer, who ascribed the study to the artist's school (oral communication, 1985).
The technique is paralleled to some extent in drawings by Fra Bartolommeo in the Uffizi (inv. 19197; Rotterdam, p. 71, fig. 31) and London (inv. 1895-9-15-487; Turner, 1986, no. 28). But those studies, which are preparatory to the Last Judgment painted by Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Albertinelli in Santa Maria Nuova in Florence (1499-1500), are done on canvas and more crisply executed than our softer, more atmospheric sketch. Nevertheless, the Teyler drawing may be of approximately the same date. The uncomplicated outlines and the weighty, unbroken folds of the drapery are similar to those in the numerous chalk studies for the Last Judgment. An attribution to Albertinelli, who completed the fresco in 1500, is conceivable but there is no concrete evidence.