A Bernardino Lanino Drawing viewing in Santa Barbara this May 2026

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to go to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, in this Marian month of May, to view a drawing that has been close to my heart for a long time. The drawing was, Head of a Veiled Woman, Looking Down, by Bernardino Lanino, Vercelli, Italy, 1540. Thank you to Olivia Giampietro, assistant registrar at the museum. The drawing was not currently on display, so she took us into the collection storage vault and informed us that the drawing was a gift to the museum from the Joseph B. and Ann S. Koepfli Trust. I wondered how this drawing from 1540 Vercelli, Italy made its way to Santa Barbara. Looking at the records, we were able to trace the provenance back to Switzerland before it made its journey to California. The Bernardino drawing was last on view to the public while it was on loan to The Legion of Honor in San Francisco in the exhibition Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present. 2021-2022.

Until now, I had only seen this drawing in reproductions in black and white. With a closer look, I could see that Bernadino had primed the paper with a wash in a pale blue tint, (see next photo) before working on it with black, white, peach and yellow pastels. (pictured here)

I connected with this piece since I first saw it in a print and referenced it in my painting, Madonna with a Yellow Rose, featured in my solo show at the Blackfriars gallery in 2024. In Italian art, "Madonna" means "My Lady", a title referring specifically to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. In the Bernardino drawing, the sfumato style, and the classic pose, shows the strong influence of the school of Da Vinci which the Lanino workshop of Vercelli was a part of. Here in California, I have viewed a Bernardino drawing at the Getty Center and now the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I am excited to see more great art that brings glory to God, here in the USA, as well as later this year when I travel to Italy.