Attributed to Lorenzo Costa

This spirited drawing belongs to a group of three pen studies of triumphal processions, of which two formerly belonged to C. R. Rudolf (sale, London, Sotheby’s, 21 May 1963, lots 5 and 6, the latter now in the J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; Brown 1997, nos. 24 and 25); a third was sold at Christie’s, London, 9 July 2002, lot 4 (previously sold at Christie’s, London, 26 November 1968, lot 70). Although only the present sheet bears an old inscription to Costa, all four have in recent years been attributed to him, as has a stylistically related Battle Scene in the British Museum (inv. 1935,0713.8; Brown 1997, no. 23). None of these drawings is, however, indisputably preparatory for a known painting, and despite Brown’s suggestion that they may somehow be related to the Gonzaga Triumphs that Costa executed for the Palazzo di San Sebastiano in Mantua (destroyed; Brown 1997, no. 26), Marzia Faietti has expressed doubts about the artist’s authorship of any of the five sheets.

Two further pen and ink drawings, one of a Calvary: the Raising of the Cross at Christ Church (inv. 0281; Byam Shaw 1976, no. 862), the other of a Rider on a Galloping Horse in Ottawa (inv. 5199.0.102; Popham and Fenwick 1965, no. 4), have been associated with this group and seem to be by the same hand.

Comparison with one of the few secure drawings by Costa, a pen and ink study in the Uffizi (inv. 178E; Di Giampaolo 1989, no. 3; Florence 2001, no. 60), known to be preparatory for the artist’s 1501 altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin with Six Saints in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna, provides some support for an attribution of the group to Costa.