Lot 14. Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo 1511-1574 Florence), The Virgin and Child with the Infant Baptist and Saint Anne, with inscriptions on the mount in ink 'Francisco Permens' (recto) and '27 x b-72 / E.7' (verso), black chalk, pen and brown ink, 7 ¾ x 6 ¾ in. (18 x 17.2 cm). Estimate USD 80,000 - USD 120,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018

Provenance: From a Private Collection. 

Note: Datable to the early 1540s, when the artist's style reached the peak of its ornamental elegance, the present drawing was finely executed by Vasari with parallel hatching carefully defining volume and shadows, while passages in the background were left unfinished. The artist achieved with fine pen and ink the nearly sculptural arrangement of the four figures, elegantly interlaced and echoing Leonardo da Vinci's cartoon of Saint Anne (National Gallery, London) while leaving unfinished the figure of Saint Joseph, suggested in black chalk at upper right. The Virgin's chiseled profile and hairdo appears as a tour de force, clearly based upon Michelangelo’s drawings of teste divine (divine heads).  

The distinctive pose of the Virgin, kneeling in profile, suggests an association with Vasari's Holy Family with Saint Francis at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (fig. 1), a painting similarly executed in the early 1540s. Despite this correspondence, the drawing does not appear to be in preparation for a painting, but can be linked to a series of drawings datable to the early 1540s all revolving around the theme of the Virgin and Saint Anne (F. Härb, The Drawings of Giorgio Vasari, Rome 2015, nos. 102-104, ill.). A drawing from this series (ibid., no. 103, ill.) was engraved by Gaspare Oselli in 1565, and one could argue that Vasari conveyed the polished and clean outlines of the present sheet for a similar translation into a print. 

Fig. 1. Giorgio Vasari, Holy Family with Saint Francis, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.