Marco Tullio Montagna

This large drawing is a study for a frescoed wall that includes fictive architecture, figures in niches, and larger panels with scenes of the birth of Jesus. Like other Roman artists of the period, Marco Tullio Montagna sketched with a pen in a free, almost agitated manner. Hardly lifting the quill from the paper, he searched for forms with fluid motions, his brief pauses creating the pooled spots of ink seen throughout the sheet. Outlines are rarely enclosed and hatching is minimal because he applied ink wash with a brush for his lights and shadows.

Montagna drafted this compositional study for one wall of his fresco cycle depicting the life of St. Joseph, which he executed for the Oratory of S. Giuseppe dei Falegnami in Rome between 1631 and 1637. In the tradition of Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo, Montagna used illusory architectural elements to order the narrative sequence of his composition, which proceeded counterclockwise around the oratory. The narrative vignettes should thus be read from right to left: the Annunciation and Adoration of the Shepherds at right, and Joseph’s Dream coupled with the Flight into Egypt at left.