Edinburgh acquires Raphael drawing

The National Galleries of Scotland have acquired a highly important study by Raphael for the altarpiece now in the Prado called “The Madonna del Pesce”. Acquired for £775,000 (after tax settlement on a price £1.8 million and the douceur for selling to a public institution) by private treaty negotiated by Christie’s, the sheet was formerly in a private collection in London. It depicts the Virgin and Child enthroned with the young Tobias and the Archangel Raphael on their right and St Jerome on their left and is a preparatory study for the altarpiece of around 1514, painted in Rome for the church of San Domenico, Naples. The drawing was once in the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence. It is now the second drawing by Raphael in the National Gallery in Edinburgh, the other being a study of a kneeling nude, purchased in 1987. Assistance to purchase came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which gave £100,000, the National Art Collections Fund, which gave £50,000 and £250,000 from the legacies of the late Keith Andrews, keeper of the Gallery’s print room from 1958 to 1985, and his sister. The rest will be paid over two years from the £1.75 million annual purchase grant of the National Galleries of Scotland.