Apparition of Christ (recto); Printed Fragment with Jupiter Enthroned with Eagle, from Caraglio's "Martyrdom of Saint Peter and Saint Paul" (verso)

Curiously drawn over a fragment of Caraglio’s engraving with the Martyrdom of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (a print designed by Parmigianino), the subject of this small and vibrant composition sketch from Parmigianino's Roman period has eluded precise explanation. David Ekserdjian has proposed the Decent of Christ into Limbo (letter of 9 September 1983), recounted in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, but the scene also shares some iconographic affinities with representations of both Christ healing the sick (Matthew 4: 23-4) and the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:I-25). The ‘portico’ in the background is similar to that in Parmigianino's drawing of Christ Healing the Sick at the Musée Pincé in Angers (Popham, 1971, 1, no. 5). The drawing's composition generally evokes the grandeur of Raphael's designs for the Sistine Chapel tapestry of Saint Paul Preaching in Athens, prepared in 1514-16 and which Parmigianino also copied faithfully in a drawing in Frankfurt after Marcantonio Raimondi's reproductive engraving (Popham no. 144, pl. 207). In style and technique, the Metropolitan Museum sheet fits with a number of compositional drawings from the Roman period that exhibit a similarly elusive religious subject matter and an expansive, Raphaelesque narrative construction. The triumphant male figure mounting the stairs on the upper left seems to be Christ in glory, who is approached by a barely sketched-out supplicant figure on the right. At the lower left, a reclining man turns toward the Christ-like figure, holding what may be a wooden cross or pallet, while a group of beseeching figures on the right emanates from the spacious portico of an antique-style building. Hovering low amidst the crowd in the right foreground is the winged figure of an angel or a demon, but it is unclear precisely what he is doing. Numerous figures populate the distant background of the building.