In his late works Perino evolved an increasingly mannered style given to demonstrations of effortless complexity, artifice, grace, and fanciful invention. These ponderous, artfully posed figures, lumbering yet vaporous, their impossibly tiny heads perched atop elongated and swollen bodies, are quintessential exemplars of a figure canon that proved immensely influential for subsequent artists working in Rome through the end of the sixteenth century. A very similar drawing by Perino representing two standing draped women, also from the collections of Peter Lely and William, Second Duke of Devonshire, belongs to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (inv. PD.33-1998, from the collection of the late John Gere.)

1501 / 1547

1501 / 1547