The gathering of manna

A photograph of a drawing at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford (inv. no.1817) attributed to the school of Raphael and possibly a copy after the original preparatory sketch for the almost entirely destroyed fresco 'The gathering of manna' painted by the workshop of Raphael (c.1517-19) in the basamento of the eighth bay of the Raphael Loggia in the Vatican.

Stefania Massari in 'Raphael Invenit' (see Bibliographical References) suggests that this drawing may be a copy from an original, by Raphael, cited by P. Zani (Enciclopedia metodica critico-ragionata delle belle arti, 1820) as in the collection of Antonio Armani. The Oxford drawing has previously been considered the modello for an engraving by Agostino Veneziano (see RCIN 853682 for an impression of this print). Both the drawing and the engraving are very different from the basamento fresco executed in the eighth loggia, as depicted in a print made by Pietro Santi Bartoli (see RCIN 853675 for an impression). Ruland (1876) hypothesised that another drawing, which he catalogued as then being in the collection of the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen (see RCIN 853682 for a photograph of the drawing) and which bears strong compositional similarities to both the Oxford drawing and Agostino Veneziano's engraving, was 'perhaps a first sketch for' the fresco.

According to Dacos (see Bibliographic References), the basamento paintings of the Raphael Loggia in the Vatican were executed in grisaille and imitated bronze reliefs.