Madonna and Child in Glory with Four Female Saints Interceding and Five Male Saints Below

Brusasorci was the most complex and influential painter in Verona during the last quarter of the 16th century. His style compounds the lustrous bulk that the school had long drawn from Giulio Romano, the linear sophistication that he gathered from training with Vasari in Florence, and contemporary Venetian elements, especially from his illustrious compatriot, Veronese. Clearly an advanced study for an altarpiece, this drawing shares basic subject, two-tiered division, tension between dense pattern and abrupt recession, partially overcast light, as well as precise physiognomic types with a series of paintings made in the 1570s for some of the major churches of Verona. It is one of the very few drawings that can be securely attributed to the artist.