Giovanni Andrea Sirani was the principal assistant of Guido Reni and remained faithful to his master’s classicising style after Reni’s death. This drawing corresponds closely with an altarpiece painted by Sirani for the church of Santi Ludovico ed Alessio, Bologna. It is possible, however, that it is not a study for the altarpiece, but a record of the design by Sirani’s daughter Elisabetta, who worked closely with her father and who was famed throughout Europe before her early death.

This drawing corresponds with a painting by Sirani for the high altar of the conventual church of San Ludovico (or Santi Ludovico ed Alessio), Bologna. Below the Madonna and Child are: St Louis (Ludovico) of Toulouse, standing to the left; kneeling next to him, the Baptist; standing behind, Sts Francis and Claire; kneeling at far right, St Anthony of Padua; and in the foreground, St Alexius (Alessio).

The painting was commissioned to take the place of Annibale Carracci’s altarpiece of the same subject (with St Catherine instead of St Anthony) when that painting was moved to the inner chapel of the convent in the mid-seventeenth century. No documents regarding the commission have been discovered, and the painting was first briefly mentioned in a guidebook of 1666. In 1757, on the instigation of the Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Malvezzi, Sirani’s painting was swapped around with Annibale’s, and placed in the inner chapel. Both paintings were sequestered on the suppression of the convent during the Napoleonic occupation. Annibale’s altarpiece was moved to the Accademia and is now in the Pinacoteca, and Sirani’s was assigned to the Bolognese church in Rome, Santi Giovanni e Petronio, where it took the place of Domenichino’s Madonna and Child with Sts John the Evangelist and Petronius, which was itself transferred to the Brera.

The drawing agrees with the painting closely: here St Louis lacks his beard, St Alexius his staff, and the base of the column is placed too high, but otherwise the correspondence is exact. The schematic outlines give the sheet the appearance of a copy, and the pen lines have been incised with a sharp stylus to transfer the composition to another sheet. It is possible that the sheet is in fact not a study by Giovanni Andrea but a record of the composition by Elisabetta Sirani, among whose drawings the sheet was mounted for George III. Giovanni Andrea’s three daughters Elisabetta, Anna Maria and Barbara all practised as artists; of these Elisabetta was much the most talented, outstripping her father and famed throughout Europe before her early death. Many of Elisabetta’s studies are executed in a distinctive technique of soft black chalk and pale wash alone, but as she trained and worked closely with Giovanni Andrea it can be difficult to distinguish their pen drawings.

Catalogue entry adapted from The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London, 2007