Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
(Italian, ca. 1510–ca. 1569)
The Annunciation, ca. 1546
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, over black chalk
Purchased on the Edwin Herzog Fund, 1999
Before entering Mariette’s collection, this drawing belonged to Pierre Crozat (1665–1740), a wealthy banker who was a close friend and fellow collector. In the catalogue of the Crozat sale, compiled by Mariette himself, the sheet was described as a “capital drawing” by the celebrated Mannerist Parmigianino. Only in the twentieth century have scholars recognized in this work the hand of Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, a painter whose reputation had been forgotten in Mariette’s time but who was one of Parmigianino’s most talented successors in sixteenth-century Parma.
Not on view