Italian School

One of a group of drawings by the same hand, once part of the Cesare da Sesto album, but not by him.¹ The sheets contain several studies for wall and ceiling decorations, particularly grotesques. The sketches appear to be aide-mémoires, which are labeled with their city of origin (Florence, Rome, Genoa, Cremona, and Trent). The recto of the present sheet is twice labeled “Roma” and the left-hand side of the sheet is copied from an undated print by Michele Greco Lucchese, which is itself inscribed “Hec Rome sunt inpontificis domo/Raphael durbinas inuentor” and has been associated with the decorations in the Loggetta of Cardinal Bibbiena in the Vatican Palace.² The printed decorations do not precisely correspond to any of the walls frescoed by Raphael and his workshop, and the Morgan drawing must, therefore, copy the print. Here, the draftsman made a more careful record of his source than in inv. II, 29a, though the proportions have been altered and a putto has been added at lower right. Lucchese was active from 1534 until his death in 1564. That the anonymous draftsman’s other drawings copy works dateable to the 1530s, suggests that the print was made in the earlier stages of Lucchese’s career and copied soon after. The cuirass at lower right on the verso is similar to the marble torso with an elaborate cuirass featuring Medusa’s head and a pair of griffins, which was restored by the end of the 1530s.³ The antique sculpture was in Rome, probably in the Galli Collection and later, by the late 1530s, in the possession of Angelo Massimi. The fountain-like structure on the verso probably stood in Florence, as indicated by the inscription beneath it.

Footnotes:

1. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. II 27a, 28a, 29a.
2. Byrne 1975, 248, note 18. For the print, see Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. RP-P-OB-9814.
3. Bober and Rubinstein 1986, 66-67, no. 24.