Preparatory study for the Immaculate Conception

This drawing, certainly by Malosso, can be connected to the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception in Rivarolo Mantovano (Mantova), signed and dated by Giovan Francesco Raimondi in 1695 (fig. 1)¹, and to the related preparatory study by Malosso in the Uffizi (fig. 2)².

As happened in other cases, Malosso provided his collaborator with the graphic project for the altarpiece he had been asked to paint, while the rather weak pictorial execution is entirely due to Raimondi.

The two drawings are almost identical in both subject and size (the drawing discussed here has a narrow border on all sides). Only the Uffizi sheet, however, is squared in black chalk, reflecting its concrete role in the execution of the altarpiece, from which it differs in small minor details. For example, the moon to the left of the Virgin is falling in both the drawings, but it is crescent in the altarpiece, and the staircase next to it is slightly different.

Comparing the drawing discussed here and the altarpiece, we note that the colours of the robes are altered, as is the pommel of the Father’s sceptre (which is however identical to the one represented in the Uffizi drawing). This suggests that Raimondi knew only the drawing in the Uffizi, which differs from the other one including all the final details of the landscape and attributes of the Virgin.

The presence of colour in this high-quality Immaculate Conception makes it a rarity in Malosso’s oeuvre. As far as we know, the artist used colours on paper only once, in a squared preparatory sheet for the Trinity with angels and saints (Soresina, Chiesa di San Siro, apse)³. In Malosso’s workshop, finished drawings like this one, neither indented nor perforated, were usually intended as reference models or as presentation drawings for future clients. The differences among the refinement of the main figure and the background, anyway, exclude that the sheet was explicitly made for a collector.