Studies for the Virgin and Saints in the Nativity (interior of shutter of the organ in Milan Cathedral)

An artist who excelled at religious compositions, Giovanni Ambrogio Figino was the leading late-sixteenth-century painter in the city of Milan, which was then ruled by the severity and piety of Counter-Reformation theology. Characteristic of Figino’s mature drawing style, this sheet of studies on blue paper was a leaf from one of his blue-paper sketchbooks. (The original blue color of the paper has faded to a gentle grayish hue.) The main motif on the sheet represents the kneeling figure of the Virgin, posed in a profile view facing right. The play of the drapery folds over her anatomy is the main concern of the drawing. The designs were studied from a model and are at once very naturalistic and sculptural in their rendering. The sheet also contains scattered motifs of arms, hands, and drapery. These designs are all related to the Virgin, the saints, and angels in Figino’s composition of the Nativity.
These preliminary studies of the kneeling Virgin in the Nativity were intended for a monumental scene painted on the interior of the shutter of the organ above the south high altar, toward the choir, in Milan Cathedral. The decoration of the organ shutters of Milan Cathedral was a major artistic enterprise in late sixteenth-century Milan, for which the artists Giovanni Ambrogio Figino, Aurelio Luini, and Camillo Procaccini competed on June 7, 1590. The winner was Figino and he began collecting his salary for the paintings on March 12, 1592 and finished on February 1, 1595. The related studies for the painted organ shutters of Milan Cathedral by Figino in the Royal Library of Windsor and Gallerie dell’Accademia of Venice are all executed in the same technique of soft black chalk on blue paper.
(Carmen C. Bambach; February 22, 2016)