Elaborately Costumed Old Woman Carrying a Bouquet of Flowers and a Viol and Bow

Paris, Louvre, Inv. 1084.

Fig.RD.30

Red chalk, 30.9 x 18.5; no. wm.

PROVENANCE: Abbé Desneux de la Noue.  Number (Pn^xx) and paraph at the lower left.  Everard Jabach (paraph on verso, Lugt 2959).  Entered the Cabinet du Roi in 1671.

LITERATURE:

Morel d’Arleux Inventory, 1797-1827, I, no. 252, as School of Michelangelo.

Kusenberg, 1931, 137, 145, no. 69, Pl. LXXVIII, as Rosso, 1530-1544.

Berenson, 1938, no. 2450A, as Rosso.

Barocchi, 1950, 210-211, Fig. 190, as Rosso, before his departure for France.

Longhi, 1951, 59 (1976, 99), as not by Rosso.

Triomphe du Maniérisme, 1955, 139-140, no. 246, as Rosso.

Berenson, 1961, no. 2450B, as Rosso.

Carroll, 1964 (1976), II, Bk. II, 506-507, F. 47, Bk. III, Fig. 201, as not by Rosso, with the suggestion that it is by Nicolò dell’Abate.

Rosaline Bacou, in Seizième Siècle… Dessins du Louvre, 1965, 44, no. 92, Pl. XXIV, as Rosso.

Béguin, 1970, 5, 91, Fig. 27, as Rosso, in his French period.

 

Formerly attributed to the School of Michelangelo, and then to Piero di Cosimo, the drawing was given to Rosso by Kusenberg.  This attribution has been generally accepted, but not by Longhi, nor by me, although I would no longer give it to Nicolò dell’Abate as I once suggested.

Neither the physiognomy nor the fluttering draperies of this figure are found in any painting or drawing by Rosso.  The soft and rather unsteady outlines and the nebulously rendered chiaroscuro of the drawing are unrelated to Rosso’s draughtsmanship.  In 1967 Bernice Davidson told me she thought that the drawing was probably by Perino del Vaga.