After Correggio, 'Group of Heads', before 1587

This painting on canvas, together with another group of heads, is a copy of part of Correggio’s destroyed fresco, The Coronation of the Virgin, painted in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. A number of fragments of Correggio’s original fresco are also in the National Gallery’s collection: Head of an Angel, Heads of Two Angels and another Head of an Angel. When the apse was rebuilt in 1587, a replica of Correggio’s Coronation of the Virgin was painted in the new apse by Cesare Aretusi.

This group of heads is a copy of the figures behind Saint John the Evangelist on the left of Correggio’s fresco. The central infant angel is a copy of one of the fresco fragments in the National Gallery.

It is likely to be an early copy made before Correggio’s original fresco was detached from the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in the 1580s. When it was in the Farnese Collection in Rome, this copy was believed to be by Annibale Carracci. Annibale wrote a letter to his cousin Lodovico from Parma on 28 April 1580 saying that he was engaged in copying heads by Correggio from ‘the cupola’. He may have been referring to either the cupola of S. Giovanni Evangelista or the cupola of the Cathedral, for which Correggio signed the contract in 1522.

Annibale was probably copying frescoes at Parma by Correggio in both 1580 and 1586, and it is possible that he painted two sets of copies of Correggio’s apse fresco – one set now in Naples, the other in Parma. The Parma set may have been made for Aretusi to use when painting the replica fresco. However, we do not know whether the National Gallery copies were made by Annibale Carracci as it is difficult to identify the artist’s own style in a copy.