Inscribed near left edge, when turned through 90 degrees to the right, in pen and brown ink, "Tridenti".
One of a group of drawings by the same hand, once part of the Casare 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 present sheet is labeled “Tridenti” and derives from a ceiling fresco by Dosso and Battista Dossi in the Castel del Buonconsiglio, Trent. Documents show that the ceiling fresco was begun in 1531 and completed in 1532, thus providing a terminus post quem for the Morgan drawing.2 The draftsman recorded only a general impression of the ceiling program, without concern for documenting specific details – the poses and number of flying putti differ, the architectural ornament has been left out, and the attributes of the figures in the lunettes have been hastily sketched or omitted altogether.
Footnotes:
- Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. II, 26a, 27a, 28a.
- Trent 2014, 276-79, no. 53.
Watermark: none.
One of thirty four 16th century Italian drawings formerly mounted in a nineteenth-century album, the Cesare da Sesto Album.This drawing was folio 29.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1867-1943, former owner.