A drawing of a priest holding the Christ Child; the Virgin to the right, with an attendant holding a basket of doves; figures with tapers beyond, other figures foreground left. Inscribed at lower centre in pencil: ‘Di Fran: Salviati’

This is a study for Paris Nogari’s painting of the Presentation in the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, executed in oils directly on the wall of a chapel dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin (F. Antal, Old Master Drawings, XIII, 1938-9, p. 40).

The altarpiece of the Assumption in the chapel is the work of Livio Agresti, and on the left wall, a pendant to Nogari’s painting, is the Birth of the Virgin by Giovanni Battista Lombardelli. The painting is located high on the right wall of the chapel, and so the scene is depicted as if from below, set before a barrel-vaulted chapel seen obliquely from the right. Nogari adopted many of the devices typical of late Roman Mannerism - half-length figures cut off by the bottom of the frame, an interest in extravagant costume, and a dramatic use of highlights.

An inscription formerly in the frieze of the chapel recorded the patronage of the papal secretary Cesare Gloriero and the completion of the decoration of the chapel in 1583 ('Caesar Glorierus Pietat. Studios. Faciendum Curavit. a. 1583'). Nogari was engaged throughout the early 1580s on decorative schemes in the churches of San Pietro in Vincoli, the Madonna dei Monti and the Trinità dei Monti, and in the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche and Sala Vecchia degli Svizzeri of the Vatican, and it is not known how long before 1583 work on the chapel in Santo Spirito in Sassia had commenced. An earlier study for the fresco, in a private collection shows most of the figures already in their final positions, and the candelabrum that relieves the upper half of the painting but is omitted here (see M. Clayton, The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection, 2007, no. 28).