Jacopo Negretti, called Palma il Vecchio

This fascinating 'Sacra Conversazione' in a mountainous landscape shows a group of Saints, including the Madonna with St. Anne holding the Christ Child, St. Joseph seated in the immediate foreground to the right, and a seated female Saint reading a book on the other side, behind a bearded Saint holding a cross. 

Drawings by Palma il Vecchio are extremely rare: his graphic corpus consists of around ten drawings.  We can assume that in his crowded workshop plenty of drawings would have been in use, especially compositional sheets like this one, but hardly any seem to have survived and attributions to the master have been hotly debated by scholars.  In the inventory of Palma's estate, taken following his death, only a small box of drawings (cassa pizola depenta con assaj desegni; ‘a small painted box with many drawings’) is mentioned in his bedroom, and a single drawing in his studio.¹

The so-called Sacre Conversazioni – images of encounters between various Saints, shown half or full length – include some of Palma’s finest artistic achievements. He produced these paintings throughout his career, but especially in the 1520s. They were mostly made for collectors, and intended for private devotion, so it is not surprising that a good number of these paintings have perished; we have not been able to connect the present composition with any surviving work. 

Stylistically, though, the drawing is close to a study by Palma il Vecchio, Holy Family with the infant St John the Baptist and a female Saint, in the British Museum.² Particularly similar are the physiognomy of the face of the Madonna and the Christ Child, the tremulous handling of the pen, the rather approximate description of hands, and the very pointed feet, like flames. The present drawing can also be compared with two further sheets: The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, formerly in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds and now at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and Madonna with Saints or Female Donors, formerly in the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden, now at the Teylers Museum, Haarlem.³ 

Although the pen lines in the handful of surviving sheets attributed to the master are generally thinner than those seen here, and shadows are typically suggested with parallel lines rather than wash, in other respects the similarities are striking, and this could therefore very well be an extremely interesting addition to the few sheets to survive, adding a subtly new dimension to our knowledge of Palma as a draughtsman.

The drawing originates from the famous Sagredo collection, and bears the initials of Palma il Giovane with the numbering 52 (see Provenance).⁴

1. The latter a sketch for an altarpiece for Santa Maria delle Grazie, commissioned by Angelo Trevisan; see P. Rylands, Palma il Vecchio,Cambridge 1992, p. 115, and p. 142, note 22 

2.  London, British Museum, inv. no. 1895,0915.810; P. Rylands, op. cit., p. 116, and p. 250, cat. D2, reproduced

3.  Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. no. 954; Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. no. B. 21; P. Rylands, op. cit.,p. 252, D5, p. 254, D8, respectively, both reproduced

4. For information on the Sagredo collection see: K. Gottardo, 'Il gusto collezionistico di un eccentrico personaggio veneziano. La collezione di disegni di Zotto Sagredo,' in Collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima,Venice 2005, pp. 239-258