A Woman brest-feeding a Child

A print reproducing a composition known through a couple of drawings, including one by an artist from the circle of Perugino part of the Libretto Veneziano, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (f. 24v), and one in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no.WA1846.13). Photographs of these two drawings can be found at RCINs 851231, 851233.

The photograph shows a full-length young woman breast-feeding a clothed child, who stands beside her at left.

The drawing reproduced in this print is part of the so-called Libretto di Raffaello or Libretto Veneziano, 53 sheets that used to be mounted in a volume. After complicated negotiations, the sketchbook was bought by the Accademia in the 1820s, after the death of Giuseppe Bossi, who was its previous owner. A number of scholars debated the author of the drawings (with many names proposed, such as Pinturicchio, Antonio da Viterbo, Eusebio del Giorgio, Girolamo Genga) and their date. In 1984, the drawings were catalogued as by an artist contemporary to Raphael, whose juvenile works he copied in this sketchbook (see Bibliographic References).