Figure Studies: Standing and Kneeling Clerics and Religious, Adam and Eve, and a Reclining Skeleton

Studies for the figures of Saint Francis, Saint Dominic, Saint Louis of Toulouse, and Saint Margaret of Cortona who stand or kneel before the Tree of Life in an allegorical representation of the Immaculate Conception, a painting by Vanni in Saint Margherita, Cortona, which is datable 1602 or shortly thereafter. The nude figures of Adam and Eve and the skeleton representing Death, studied at the upper right margin of the sheet, appear in the painting at the foot of the Tree. It was Peter Anselm Riedl who was the first to point out the connection between our drawing and the painting in Cortona. He has also identified drawings for the same picture in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin Dahlem, and in the E. Schapiro collection in Paris (the latter repr. Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 30, 1979, p. 87, fig. 8). However, the composition studies in the Uffizi and the Louvre (10808 F and Inv. 2038, respectively), which Riedl considers to be original works by Vanni, appear to us weak copies of a lost original drawing. Similar figures of two kneeling boshops appear in the stylistically related pen drawing in the Uffizi no. 4818.