Lower Level North Gallery

In the foreground, the three Magi and their attendants pay respect to the Virgin and Child, seated at right beneath the architectural structure. As emphasized by the stick figures drawn on the mountain, the purpose of this sheet was to establish the placement of figures and objects in the landscape. Despite the looseness of the drawing, which has not been connected to a painting, there is not a single pentimento. It may be a freehand copy after another composition.

This sheet establishes almost exactly the composition of a painting of the same title now at the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The twisting Christ child (whose muscularity recalls Michelangelo's figures) demonstrates Andrea's mastery of complex poses and emphasizes the connection between mother and child, as Christ turns to meet Mary's gaze. The character of the young Baptist remains unresolved. His muddled face, containing pentimenti showing him facing in various directions, contrasts with the clarity of passages like the Virgin's hand reaching toward her breast.

Studying two draped male figures in separate frames and at slightly different scales, the artist may have produced this sheet (which features two similar figures on the verso) as an early design of the four Evangelists for an embroidered altar frontal (Museo Diocesano, Cortona). He explores poses engaged with the balustrade and experiments with bending limbs and twisting torsos. Andrea's sketch of the figure at right facing in several directions conveys an almost animated effect.

Firm contours establish the pose of the infant Christ in The Madonna of the Steps. A second sketch concentrates on rendering a fuller, softer belly. The handwriting in ink bleeding through from the paper's other side — impossible to read because the sheet is laid down — underscores the function of these sheets as workshop material.

Andrea focuses here on specific details of the same figure that is in his Study of a Kneeling Figure in Profile to the Left. He begins in red chalk with the left arm and rolled sleeve, experiments with foreshortening in the legs, and then uses black chalk (perhaps to signal a next stage in his design process) to compose further studies of arms and hands. Curiously, he produced these black chalk studies facing in both directions.

This sheet presents a young man almost exactly as he appears in The Feast of Herod, Andrea's fresco in Florence's Chiostro dello Scalzo. He is a servant who recoils at the appearance of Salomé with the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Here, only his raised hand gives any indication of the drama as his face is neutral, unlike the shocked expression in the painting.

These five studies for The Madonna of the Sack lunette in SS. Annunziata in Florence (one of Andrea's best known and lauded works) provide rare insight into the early stages of the artist's creative process. Moving quickly across the sheet, perhaps only in a matter of minutes, Andrea explores different arrangements of the Virgin and Child, from the Virgin standing, at top left, to sitting and nursing the Christ child at bottom right. His diverse handling of chalk — including faint strokes and reworked, stressed contours — echoes his experimental approach to the composition.

With quick strokes and remarkable economy of line, Andrea worked out the complex configuration of ten figures on this small sheet, a study for the Sarzana altarpiece, formerly in Berlin (destroyed during World War II). Scribbles describe details like St. Onophrius's loincloth of leaves (at far left) while a series of ovals marks his consideration of the head of the Christ child (at center). Swift lines falling from the Virgin's head emphasize her as the apex of a pyramidal figural composition, a Renaissance convention.