Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Anne (?) (c. 1545): Art, History and Details

Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Anne (?) (c. 1545) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Battista Franco (Italian, c. 1510–1561).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Battista Franco was one of Michelangelo’s most devoted followers: his biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that he drew every figure on the master’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. In Franco’s own works, such as this drawing, he made new, inventive compositions that emulated Michelangelo without directly copying or quoting his works. The drawing—possibly a study for painted pottery—shows the Virgin Mary and Christ flanked by Saints Anne and Catherine. The unusual, twisting forms of the saints recall the inventive poses that Michelangelo created for many of the saints on the Last Judgment fresco.

Object facts

• Title: Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Anne (?)
• Date: c. 1545
• Creator attribution: Battista Franco (Italian, c. 1510–1561)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash with red chalk underdrawing, heightened with white gouache (partially tarnished); pricked (lower part of Virgin)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26.1 x 26.2 cm (10 1/4 x 10 5/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1965.16

Collection credit

Delia E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Richards, Louise S. “Drawings by Battista Franco.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 8 (October 1965): 106–112.
• Barocci, Federigo, and Luca Baroni. Barocci ritrovato: il restauro del Martirio di san Sebastiano. Milano, Italia : Officina libraria, 2020.
• Baroni, Luca. "Two New Early Drawings by Federico Barocci in the Louvre and in the British Museum." Artibus et Historiae : An Art Anthology 90 (2024): 165-178.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.