A seated sybil holding books and a tablet with a putto

A particularly seductive example of Anselmi’s softly-modelled drawing style, this study can be connected with several others of the same subject, notably a doubled-sided sheet previously with Pietro Scarpa, Venice (M. Di Giampaolo in Dessins anciens, exhib. cat. Paris, Grand Palais, 1978, no. 2, ill.), and two at the Uffizi (Fadda, op. cit., pp. 78-79, figs. 17, 20). One of the studies on one of these (fig. 17) is especially similar in composition, although less worked out, and it is evident that they relate to the same project: the Capella della Croce in the church of San Pietro Martire in the artist’s native Parma, sadly demolished in 1814. The present drawing offers the most complete and detailed indication of what Anselmi’s decoration of the chapel, recorded as ‘nine lunettes representing five prophets and four sibyls’, looked like.