The Assumption of the Virgin
Before 1604. Grey wash, Pencil on grey paper.Not on display
This impressive drawing is a finished preparatory study, squared for transfer, for Lilio´s altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin in the church of S. Giovanni Battista at Numana, a small town on the coast, south of Ancona, which is signed and dated 1604. This picture is one of the more important works to have survived from the artist´s later period, following his return to the Marches from Rome where he had spent much of his early career.
The handling is characteristic of Lilio´s drawn modelli, where the modulations of light and dark are carefully prepared in delicate shading, which is either stumped in black chalk or brushed in with delicate tints of mono-chrome wash and where the whole design is squared with a small grid for the transfer of the composition to the surface to be painted. In some aspects, this particular method of resolving the chiaroscuro of a given invention ahead of the execution of the painting recalls the practice of Federico Barocci, who painstakingly prepared the lights and darks of a given composition, independent of its coloring.
Lilio´s composition certainly echoes that of Barocci´s magnificent, unfinished late bozzetto of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, which has been connected with Barocci´s destroyed altarpiece in the choir of Urbino Cathedral. Lilio would certainly have had the possibility to know the Urbino bozzetto, since during his lifetime it was still in the possession of the artist´s heirs. Not only is there a notable similarity in the disposition of the figures of the Apostles around the tomb, but also the flying angels to either side of the seated Virgin borne aloft on clouds are taken directly from Barocci´s prototype. The fragment of an earlier, more rapidly drawn preparatory study, showing only the lower, left-hand section of the composition, is in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1975-9-20-9).
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.184
