The Infant Christ and St John Embracing

Note that in the record, between the title and provenance, two identical works are referenced as forming part of Charles I's collection. It is possible that the work currently in the Royal Collection cited and illustrated here, which bears a CR brand, actually corresponds with the work referred to in the record as a copy from the Mantua collection given away by Charles I to Sir James Palmer, and not with that of the principal record. Yet John Shearman (Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty..., 1983, p.40) noted that the Royal Collection picture also has a seventeenth-century note on the back reading "boug[ht]... from [?] Italy". If the work was part of the Mantua sale, the note would specify Mantua rather than Italy. Therefore, it is probable that the version in the Royal Collection today is identical with that referred to in the principal van der Doort record and not the one given away.

Another work of similar appearance and size, also on panel but without a CR brand, was once in the Los Angeles County Museum and sold at Sotheby's New York 2010, lot 15, 36.8 x 52.1. This has been associated with a 1632 inventory of the collector Roberto Canonici in Ferrara. It is possible that the ex-Los Angeles work is identical with the one referred to by van der Doort as the copy from Mantua given away to Sir James Palmer. Scholars have yet to decide which is the prime version (John Shearman thought they both might have been autograph)

The Judith by Raphael referred to in the provenance is probably the Judith and Holofernes by Andrea Mantegna in the National Gallery of Art Washington (no. 1942.9.42)

Van der Doort c.1639

Said to be Parmigianino (Mazzola)

Infant Christ and St John, embracing in the desert

Walpole Society reference (1960): 
WS 81, № 26
Measurements (Van der Doort): 
1ft 4½in x 1ft 6in (41.9 x 45.7cm)
Light: 
light from the left
Frame: 
(black ebony frame)
Provenance: 
A copy of this picture was in the Mantua collection and given by the King to Sir James Palmer [see above]. This version from the late Earl of Pembroke in exchange for a Judith, little full-length figure said to be by Raphael (half-life-size, ebony frame)
Gift / Exchange / Bought / Inherited: 
exchanged
Location: 
Room description extended: 
By your majesty's especially command your pictures and rarities which you had kept at St James's in the Cabinet Room were transported and brought to Whitehall into the Privy Gallery in your Majesty's newly-erected Cabinet Room, whereof the particulars as well of the said rarities from St James's as also other Pictures medals agates or the like since by Your Majesty thereunto augmented, as by the number and bigness particularly signified doth appear as followeth
Original Manuscript page number: 
Windsor MS., f. 8 and V&A MS, f. 29, no 30 (WS 209) and MS. Ash. 1514, f. 102
Charles II inventory c1666: 
Whitehall, no 338
Interpreting the text: 
The text in brackets comes from the V&A and Ashmolean Manuscripts
Identification certainty: 
Identified
Sale Inventory c.1649-51