The Getty Museum's painting of bird-hunting on the Venetian lagoon (Fig. 1) has been the subject of much discussion since its reappearance in Italy in 1944. It is generally accepted as an early work of Vittore Carpaccio,l and has a provenance that can be traced back only to the first part of the nineteenth century when it was in the collection of Cardinal Fesch. It subsequently moved through the collections of the Marchese Gian Paolo Campana and Camillo Benucci and was rediscovered in Rome in 1944 by Andrea Busiri-Vici.2 It was cleaned and restored by Carlo Matteuci at this time,3 and was exported from Italy in 1950, after which it entered a Swiss collection. The Getty Museum purchased it in 1979.

In a seminal article published in 1970 Alessandro Ballarin announced that he was shortly to publish a book on the drawings of Girolamo Romanino. Although no such book has appeared, Ballarin was evidently concerned about the state of affairs in this field, the two most systematic surveys - both published in 1965 - being somewhat inadequate.2 Brief and valuable discussions of the problem had already been aired before Ballarin's essay, which concerned three drawings by Palma Vecchio, Lotto and Romanino, but his announcement seems to have inhibited any further broad investigations.3 Indeed, the most recent contributions to the subject are short notes on previously unknown sheets and entries in exhibition catalogues.4 The purpose of this two-part article is to outline Romanino's career as a draughtsman for the first time. No comprehensive catalogue raisonne is here attempted: only preparatory or fully documented drawings will be discussed, including recent attributions and previously over- looked evidence, in order to construct a plausible chronology for Romanino's graphic oeuvre and to consider some major changes in his working methods.