Studio of Giulio Pippi, called Giulio Romano Rome 1499? - 1546 Mantua

George John, 2nd Earl of Spencer, Althrop, Northampton, purchased in Rome, probably in 1785, according to the 1976 catalogue of the Spencer collection (see Literature);
Thence by descent.

C. Ruland, The Works of Raphael Santi da Urbino, As Represented in the Raphael Collection in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle…, Weimar 1876, p. 255, B.I, 28 (as executed after Raphael's death, and [perhaps] in part from his Designs);
Dr. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings,Sculptures and Illuminated MSS., London 1854, vol. III, p. 455 (as by Giulio).
P. Pouncey and J.A. Gere, Italian Drawings in the Department
of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Raphael and his Circle London 1962, p. 81, under cat. no. 138;
K.J. Garlick, "A Catalogue of the Pictures at Althorp," in The Walpole Society 1974 - 1976, vol. 45, London 1976, p. 65, cat. no. 508;
N. Dacos, ‘Un Élève de Raphaël aux Pays-Bays,’ in Relations Artistiques entre les Pays-Bas et l’Italie á la renaissance, Brussels and Rome 1990, pp. 80-81;
C. Hope, in Raffaello in Vaticano, exhibition catalogue, Vatican City, Braccio di Carlo Magno, October 16, 1984 to January 16, 1985, p. 332;
H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2^nd edition, Edinburgh 1993, p. 73 and note 8, p. 74. 

The Head of a Girl is a fragment from a cartoon for an ambitious series of twelve tapestries of the life of Christ, six scenes from his childhood and another six after his Crucifixion.  They were known as the ‘Scuola Nuova’ tapestries, to distinguish them from the more famous ‘Scuola Vecchio´ tapestries, the Acts of the Apostles, designed by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel.  There is some uncertainty about when the series was commissioned, possibly 1520 or 1524, but in 1524 a payment was made to Pieter van Aelst, whose Brussels workshop wove the tapestries,and the finished works were delivered in 1531.

The tapestry of The Massacre of the Innocents, now in the Vatican Museum, was woven in three separate panels all with borders, suggesting it was designed for a specific room, in which the walls were broken up by various architectural elements.  The Head of a Girl is that of the young woman in the central panel who races up the stairs away from the murdering soldiers (see fig. 1).  She is drawn here in reverse, as is usual for a tapestry cartoon.  The design is one of only twelve known fragments for The Massacre of the Innocents; the others, mainly of heads and hands, are in: the British Museum; Christ Church, Oxford; the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; formerly in the collection of Timothy Clifford; and the largest fragment, the design for the figures in the first panel in the Foundling Hospital, London.¹    

Vasari mentions Giovanni Francesco Penni as having been involved in the creation of the tapestries and earlier modern scholars attributed the designs to Raphael, but it is now generally believed that Giulio Romano was responsible for the designs and they were executed by his studio.  Some of the fragments have been tentatively attributed to Tommaso Vincidor, a pupil of Raphael who has been associated with other tapestry designs, and others to an unknown Flemish artist working for Giulio.²  It is tempting to think that the conception of the present figure may ultimately derive from a drawing by Raphael himself, a red chalk drawing of the Massacre of the Innocents in the Royal Collection, Windsor.³  The composition of the drawing, which was engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, is quite different from the tapestry, but the torso of the running woman with her hands raised and her hair blowing back behind her, is clearly visible at the center left. 

1  P. Pouncey and J. A. Gere, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum:  Raphael and His Circle, London 1962, no. 137 and 138; K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. II, Italian Schools, Oxford 1972, nos. 59-62; J. Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church Oxford, Oxford 1976, no. 457; H. Brigstocke, Op. cit. no. 638; A. E. Popham and K.M. Fenwick, European Drawings (and two Asian Drawings) in the Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Toronto 1965, no. 17; T. Clifford, his sale , Sotheby’s, London, July 3, 1989, lot 9; B. Nicolson, The Treasures of the Foundling Hospital, Oxford 1972, no. 69.
2  See K. Oberhuber, ‘Review of Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum:  Raphael and His Circle,’ in Master Drawings, vol. 1, no.  (Autumn 1963), p. 50; N. Dacos, Op. cit., pp. 79-82; and C. Hope, Op. cit., p. 332. Another fragment from this series attributed to Vincidor was sold in these rooms on January 23, 2003, lot 55.
3  M. Clayton, Raphael and His Circle:  Drawings from Windsor Castle, London 1999, no. 20.