Description:

collector’s mark lower right [L. 2184]
pen and brown ink, brown wash
186 x 216 mm (upper corners cut diagonally)

Provenance:

Jonathan Richardson the Elder, London (1667-1745) [L. 2184], with his attribution on the old mount [L. 2995] and his shelf-marks on the verso [L. 2983]
Possibly his sale, Mr. Cock, London, 22 January - 10 February 1747
Jacques Petit-Hory, Paris (1929-1992) [L.4138]
with Baskett and Day Ltd, London
acquired from the above by the present owner, May 1982

Literature

Anne Varick Lauder, Battista Franco (c. 1510-1561). His Life and Work with Catalogue Raisonné, 4 vols. Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 2004, vol. 2, p. 613, cat. no. 433 DA; vol. 4, fig. 19 [reproduced]

Note:

This drawing is a copy after Raphael's fresco The meeting of Leo the Great and Attila, in the Stanza d’Eliodoro in the Vatican Palace, painted between 1513-1514.

Franco is perhaps better known as a draughtsman than as a painter and he is well documented as a copyist of ancient sculpture as well as the graphic works of Raphael and Michelangelo. Some twenty-two copies by Franco after Michelangelo are recorded in the scholar Anne Varick Lauder’s unpublished thesis and catalogue raisonné of Franco’s oeuvre, whilst another ten copies after Raphael are recorded in her catalogue of Franco’s drawings in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. In her thesis Dr Lauder argued that the handling of the pen in the present drawing and the delicate passages of wash indicate that Franco likely knew a now lost modello for Raphael’s fresco and worked from this sheet as opposed to the fresco itself. This is the case for another drawing by Franco in the Louvre, which is a copy of a modello by Raphael for a second Vatican fresco, The Expulsion of Heliodorus.