This recently discovered drawing is a major and entirely characteristic addition to the small group of sheets that can be reliably attributed to Brusasorci. It shows the Virgin Mary being crowned as Queen of Heaven by the Holy Trinity, with the apostles gathered around her empty tomb below gazing up in wonder at the joyous event. As was recognised when the drawing appeared on the London art market, it is especially close in scale, technique and handling to a preparatory study at Chatsworth for the artist's altarpiece of The Virgin and Child with Saints Sebastian, Monica, Augustine and Roch and two Donors of the Da Cerea Family (Sant'Eufemia,Verona) which is the benchmark for Brusasorci as a draughtsman.

The altarpiece is usually dated to the first half of the 1550s. Some of the figure types and the handling of the draperies in the Edinburgh sheet also find particularly close parallels in a large drawing in the Louvre of the Parable of the Wedding Feast. The present drawing is of special interest in that it is preparatory for a fresco on the lateral wall of a side-chapel in Leon Battista Alberti’s great basilica of Sant' Andrea in Mantua.

Until the discovery of its connection with the drawing, the fresco had not previously been associated with Brusasorci's name. It was traditionally thought to be by the Mantuan mannerist painter Ippolito Andreasi (1548-1608), although that attribution had been questioned in the most recent literature; and it was considered to date from much later in the century, around 1589—91, when the chapel was under the patronage of Federico Cattaneo, a former minister to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga who was then primicerio of Sant'Andrea. 

Close comparison with other frescoes by Brusasorci — notably those decorating the Cappella della Muletta (or della Maestà) in Santa Maria in Organo, Verona, and the Conversion of St Paul and Martyrdom of St Ursula and her Companions in Santissima Trinità in the same city, all of which have recently been dated to around 1552-3 — leaves little room for doubt that the Mantuan fresco is also by him, and probably of about the same date. The same is true of the pendant fresco representing the Birth of the Virgin on the opposite wall of the chapel. This is therefore a rare instance when a major project can be added to an artist's oeuvre on the basis of the identification of a preparatory drawing.

Furthermore, the two scenes in Sant'Andrea are much better preserved than most of Brusasorci's other frescoes. The scale and clarity of the drawing suggest that it may have served as a modello to be shown to the patron for approval before being squared up for enlargement. The proportions of the fresco are even taller and narrower than those of the drawing, and to help bridge the gap between the heavenly and terrestrial realms Brusasorci introduced a landscape with a large tree, a pair of musician angels, and a child angel lowering the Virgin's girdle to St Thomas. The frescoed heaven is also more densely populated with cherubim than the drawn one, and monochrome winged angels or victories bearing palm fronds.

This text was first published in The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections (2004).