Recto by Raphael, Verso by Poliodoro. A sheet of drawings for the Sala di Costantino

• Autores: Paul Joannides
• Localización: Artibus et historiae: an art anthology, ISSN 0391-9064, Nº. 89, 2024, págs. 67-90
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • We have had until now four drawings for the Battle of the Milvian Bridge – one of the wall paintings in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. The most important and informative is Gian Francesco Penni’s large modello in which the whole scene is laid out. There survive three pages of black-chalk nude studies for individual combatants. Two are by Raphael. One, in the Louvre, is for the leftmost infantrymen, a variant of the Borghese warrior type, holding an abbreviated sword. The second, in Oxford, prepares the two soldiers attempting to enter the boat. The third drawing, at Chatsworth, by Giulio Romano, shows a falling cavalryman. To these three studies can now be added a fourth, different from them both in type and medium, a Study for an Officer on a Fallen Horse. It is on the recto of a sheet of which the verso is by Polidoro. The drawing is not a copy of this section of the modello, nor can it precede it. Polidoro’s drawings, one on the recto and several on the verso, probably post-date Raphael’s drawing by no more than months.