GIULIO PIPPI, CALLED GIULIO ROMANO (ROME 1499-1546 MANTUA)

The present sheet is stylistically comparable to drawings made by Giulio in Mantua in the 1530s, such as, for example, the Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome, Stephen, Anthony Abbot and George in the Louvre (inv. 3464; see Cox-Rearick, op. cit., 2000, p. 12). This type of drawings was intended as modelli meant to be enlarged into cartoons to be used for paintings or fresco decorations (Cox-Rearick, op. cit., no. 3, ill.).
Although no painted composition with Saint Blaise is known, Giulio must have been commissioned a work dedicated to this saint since he developed the subject in other drawings of the same time. A sheet in the Royal Collection, for example, depicts the saint frontally kneeling with two boys on either side holding the instruments of his martyrdom (inv. RCIN 990508; see A.E. Popham, J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty The King at Windsor Castle, London, 1949, no. 354, ill.).

As has been suggested by Janet Cox-Rearcik (op. cit., 2001, no. 3), an altarpiece or a mural decoration dedicated to Saint Blaise could have been destined to Verona or Mantua. In Verona in the church of Saints Nazaro e Celso, a chapel is dedicated to the saint and contains his relics; Giulio was working in the town in the mid-1530s. Alternatively, Giulio could have been commissioned a work for the church of San Biagio in Mantua that had been newly rebuilt by his patron, Duke Federico Gonzaga, to replace a ruined Medieval structure, and for which Giulio had provided a design.