Attributed to Giorgione
(Italian, 1477/78–1510)
Putto Bending a Bow, ca. 1505–8
Red chalk
The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rogers Fund, 1911
Mariette extended this sixteenth-century drawing of a putto by adding the niche and pedestal upon which it stands. He based these additions on historical research and believed that the drawing was related to Giorgione’s fresco decoration of the facade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the headquarters of the German merchants in Venice. In Mariette’s time, the frescoes were almost completely deteriorated, yet written accounts described the many different motifs painted by Giorgione on the facade. Among these was the figure of an angel in the guise of Cupid.