Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called Parmigianino

Carlo Prayer (L.2044)

Artist appears to have reused sheet, as composition on verso is partial. Some gray staining at top, and a few other spots elsewhere. Strip of light pink discoloration around edges, verso, probably from old mounting. Otherwise reasonably good. Sold in a modern gilded frame.
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The figure of the executioner seen from behind is closely related to the main and focal figure in the center of Parmigianino's drawing of the Martyrdom of St. Paul and St. Peter, now in the British Museum,¹ which is a very finished composition inscribed in a contemporary hand: Fran^us Parm. F. 1527.  It corresponds in reverse to the engraving by Jacopo Caraglio (B. XV, 71-72.8; see fig. 1), and according to Popham was the drawing used for the engraving.  Popham suggested dating the British Museum drawing before the Sack of Rome in 1527.  Two further earlier compositional drawings connected to this same project are in the Louvre.²  They reveal the evolution of the narrative, and the strong debt of the young Parmigianino to Raphael, whose compositional skill must have been highly influential and even almost overwhelming.³  According to Vasari, in 1524 Clement VII wanted to commission Parmigianino, who was newly arrived in Rome, to decorate the Sala dei Pontefici in the Vatican.  Popham suggested that this room, which had been known as the Sala dei Martiri, would have been the perfect location for a subject such as the Martyrdom of St. Paul.

It is tempting to associate the other, quickly drawn male figure on the present sheet with the same composition.  Full of pentimenti in both arms, the figure is a seated man who looks backwards and points forward with his right hand.  It could be a rejected study for the emperor Nero in consultation with a senator, standing behind him, while pointing towards the martyrdom of St. Paul.  According to Vasari, this composition was modified and reproduced in a chiaroscuro woodcut, under Parmigianino's supervision, by Antonio da Trento in Bologna around 1527-28.⁴ 

Most interestingly the fragment on the verso is after Raphael's Joseph before Pharoah, in the basamento of the Stanza di Eliodoro, in the Vatican.  As the sheet has been cut, the fragment only shows Joseph kneeling and other figures standing behind him.⁵  

1.  Inv. no. 1904-12-1-2;  A.E Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings by Parmigianino, New Haven and London 1971, vol. I, no. 190, reproduced vol. II, pl. 135

2.  Inv. nos. 6399, 6400; Ibid., vol. I, nos. 379, 380, vol. II, pls. 136, 137 

3.  Ibid., p. 139, in note to no. 379

4.  B. XII, 79-80.28; S. Béguin, M. Di Giampaolo, M. Vaccaro, Parmigianino,The Drawings, Turin-London 2000, p. 76, reproduced

5.  For the composition, see G. Bernini Pezzini, et al., Raphael Invenit, Rome 1985, p. 59, no. 7, reproduced p. 346