Lot 1: Girolamo Bedoli (1500-1569)

Adam holding an apple, seated, in a medallion; and Aaron looking up, seated, in a medallion black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white, squared in black chalk (2) 12 7/8 x 4 3/8 in. (326 x 112 mm.) and 13 1/8 x 41/2 in. (333 x 114 mm.) PROVENANCE A. Rutgers, his inscriptions 'Franco Parmigo: 1536.' (1) and 'Franco Parmigiano f t 1536-' (2). H.A.R. Munro of Novar G.A. Watson. H.E. Neville Clark. with W.R. Jeudwine. Peter Josten, New York. LITERATURE L. Fr”hlich-Bum, 'Five Unpublished Drawings by Parmigianino', Pantheon, 1960, 18, 5, pp. 239-41, illustrated (as Parmigianino). M. Di Giampaolo, Girolamo Bedoli, Florence, 1997, nos. 140-1 (as Attributed to Bedoli). EXHIBITION New York, Master Drawings in Private Collections, 1962, nos. 15-6 (as Parmigianino). New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, 1994, nos. 9a-b (entry by Linda Wolk-Simon). NOTES The attribution of the drawings to Bedoli was kindly confirmed by Mario Di Giampaolo on the basis of transparencies. These two drawings record Parmigianino grisaille compositions on the east vault of the Church of Santa Maria della Steccata, in Parma. These two drawings were previously attributed to Parmigianino and Linda Wolk-Simon was the first to re-attribute them to Girolamo Bedoli, Parmigianino's cousin. Dr. Wolk-Simon compared the style of the drawings to Bedoli's Meeting at the Golden Gate in the Art Institute of Chicago and the two walking figures at Christ Church, Oxford (M. Di Giampaolo, op. cit., nos. 67 and 107). The drawings were probably executed during the years 1547-1553, when Bedoli was decorating the northern apse of the Steccata with frescoes of the Pentecost and The Adoration of the Shepherds (M. Di Giampaolo, op. cit., nos. 27 and 36). In each of these frescoes he introduced two medallions in grisaille with Old Testament figures, rather similar in composition to these two drawings, and certainly inspired by the frescoes of his cousin on the opposite side of the church.