A woman praying

A facsimile etching of a drawing depicting a woman praying now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 20 recto). See RCIN 854664 for a photograph of the drawing. This print was catalogued by Ruland (1876) as having been 'published by Celotti'; by this he was presumably referring to Luigi Celotti's 'Disegni originali di Raffaello Sanzio, per la prima volta pubblicati (da Luigi Celotti), esistenti nella Imperial Regia Accademia di belle arti di Venezia' (1829). Lettered with attribution of the drawing to Raphael, and numbered within the plate at top right: XXVI.

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) noted that the model for this figure has been identified by various scholars as a woman depicted in the background of the 'Baptism of Christ', a fresco which was executed by Pietro Perugino in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican (c.1482).  

This drawing 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 museum 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 Gallerie dell'Accademia catalogued the drawings as by an artist contemporary to Raphael, whose juvenile works he copied in this sketchbook (see Bibliographic References).