Interior with the Virgin and Child, St. Mark and an Allegory of Venice
XVI century. Wash, Pencil, Pencil ground, Grey-brown ink on yellow paper.Not on display
Through the open window is glimpsed a view of the piazza in front of the Doges´ Palace, behind the square is the basilica of S. Marco, the Campanile and the Torre dell´Orologio. Given the drawing´s subject matter, it seems likely that the composition was intended for a picture commissioned by a Venetian patron, though no such work has been so far identified. The style points to an artist active in the early decades of the seventeenth century, with a knowledge of the paintings of the Carracci and their school. This is evident both in the monumental conception of the half-length composition and in the classicizing treatment of the head of St. Mark. The drawings of the Veronese painter Alessandro Turchi, called Orbetto (1578-1649), who worked in Rome in the second decade of the seventeenth-century alongside painters from the Carracci school, spring to mind in this connection, as Florian Härb has kindly suggested (January 2004). Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian, who has studied Turchi´s oeuvre over many years, does not however accept an attribution to the artist (February 2004).
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.200,439
