Andrea Meldolla, called Schiavone

Generally good condition. Media strong and paper still light blue. A few light brown and small stains at the bottom of the sheet and to the right corner and at the top margin near the center. On the verso staining from glue can be seen around the edges and some brown staining which have not affected visibly the recto.
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The black chalk style of this fascinating and rare sheet by Schiavone can be associated, in its vaporous delicacy and indefiniteness, with a number of other drawings by the artist.  Its quick, sfumato use of the medium, resulting in an atmospheric chiaroscuro effect, bears witness to the key influences on Schiavone's style and clearly shows the two main directions of his artistic career.  On one side lies the mannerist influence of the elegant style of Parmigianino, to whom many of Schiavone's drawings, including this, have been attributed in the past, and on the other is what Francis Richardson described as 'a super-Venetian painterly handling'¹, a freedom of expression that Schiavone achieved from around the 1540s on, which was to have a far-reaching impact on many artists in the Veneto.

As Richard Cocke has noted, the style of the present sheet can be closely compared, to a study for an Adoration of the Shepherds now in the Uffizi.²  Formerly attributed to Parmigianino, the Uffizi drawing was recognized as the work of Schiavone by Konrad Oberhuber, and it is a preparatory study, in reverse, for an etching by Schiavone, datable to 1550-55.³  Another very comparable drawing is a Lamentation over the Dead Christ, formerly ascribed to Camillo Boccaccino, also in the Uffizi, and again attributed to Schiavone by Oberhuber; that sheet is indented for transfer, although no etching of the composition is known.⁴  One more drawing by the artist in the Uffizi, also an Adoration of the Shepherds once attributed to Parmigianino, though this time not connected with any known painted works or prints, is stylistically very close to the present sheet.⁵

Schiavone's earliest prints seem mostly to be relatively faithful copies either from Parmigianino's drawings or from engravings after Parmigianino, and he must have been very well aware of Parmigianino's activity as a print maker. For a drawing by Parmigianino related to a chiaroscuro woodcut see lot...

^1. F.L. Richardson, Andrea Schiavone, Oxford 1980, p. 69
^2. E-mail to the present owner, 27 March 2016; Florence, Uffizi, inv. no. 13597 F; Schiavone tra Parmigianino Tintoretto e Tiziano, exhib. cat., Venice, Museo Correr, 2015-16, p. 393, no. XV 8, reproduced fig. XV 8 
^3. B/M 62; F.L. Richardson, op. cit., Oxford 1980, p. 91, no. 62, reproduced fig. 142
^4. Florence, Uffizi inv. no. 13234 F; Venice, Museo Correr, op. cit., 2015-16, p. 392, no. XV 6, reproduced fig. XV 6
^5. Florence, Uffizi inv. no. 13234 F; Venice, Museo Correr, op. cit., 2015-16, pp. 392-393, no. XV 7, reproduced fig. XV 7