Studies of the Holy Family with a kneeling figure, probably Pope Clement VII, and possibly the infant St John. On the verso, a drawing of the Infant Christ seated, with torso twisted to the right, his head inclined left.

The studies seem to be towards an unexecuted painting. The muscular Christ Child (drawn three times, including a larger sketch on the verso of the sheet) twists to lean on a globe symbolising dominion over the Earth. His pose recalls the Christ Child in an earlier tondo of the Madonna and Child by Sebastiano. In the principal study here Joseph introduces a kneeling figure identifiable as Clement VII, whom Sebastiano painted and drew many times, always emphasising his prominent nose and cheekbones. Here he is bearded, dating the drawing after the Sack of Rome, when the Pope grew a beard as a sign of penitence. The likeness is particularly close to a drawing in the British Museum of the Pope with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, which presumably dates from (or shortly after) the winter of 1529-30, when Pope and Emperor met in Bologna.

Sebastiano travelled in the Pope’s retinue to Bologna, and while there he surely resumed an acquaintance with Parmigianino. The two must have known each other from Parmigianino’s period in Rome in 1524-7, when Parmigianino had presented Clement with three paintings and had subsequently received a commission (unexecuted) to fresco the Sala dei Pontifici of the Vatican. In Bologna, Parmigianino gave the Pope another painting, known as the Madonna della Rosa: the common title of that painting is misleading, for although the Christ Child does indeed hold a rose, the more prominent symbol is the terrestrial globe on which he sprawls. Parmigianino’s preparatory drawings show that the globe was a late addition to the iconography, and was presumably introduced when Parmigianino decided to present the work to the Pope.

Parmigianino’s painting would surely have been known to Sebastiano, and informed a number of his subsequent works. His response here is primarily iconographic, though a drawing by Sebastiano in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1975.89), recalls the form of Parmigianino’s painting more explicitly, with the Child sprawling on a globe behind which crouches the infant Baptist. But the painting closest in spirit (and probably in date) to the present drawing is Sebastiano’s Madonna of the Veil in Naples, in which the figure of Joseph bears a striking resemblance to the Pope.

The sheet is stamped at lower centre with the five-pointed star associated with Nicholas Lanier (Lugt 2886). On the verso is the pen inscription 'di Fra Barto. dl piombo', apparently confusing Sebastiano del Piombo with Fra Bartolomeo.

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