Saint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant Jesus

On Christmas Eve in 1517 Saint Cajetan (Gaetano Thiene, Italian, 1480-1547) had a vision in which the Blessed Virgin offered him the Christ Child. Cajetan is here identified by his attribute, a branch of lilies, and by the high-collared habit of the Theatine order, of which he was one of the founders. Possibly executed in preparation for an engraving, this highly finished sheet was attributed to Gaetano Zompini by an annotation of the so-called "Reliable Venetian Hand": these inscriptions, in neat, slanting letters, giving the artist's name and place of origin, are the work of a still-unidentified Venetian collector of the eighteenth century.

Attributions to Gaetano Zompini in the "Reliable Venetian Hand" appear on five drawings, all similar in style to the present example (Bettagno, 1966, nos. 118, 120-122, 183), including the "Chirst Giving the Keys to St. Peter" in the Witt Collection, Courtauld Institute, London (no. 4120); "Aeneas Carrying his Father from Burning Troy" in the British Museum, London (no. 1927, 0112.2), and the "Virgin and Child Appearing to Saint Anthony of Padua" in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (no. 22116).