Girolamo da Carpi

The courtyard of Fabio Sassi's home in Rome, shown here, housed one of the major Renaissance collections of antiquities, including an antique porphyry statue now identified as Apollo and in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Well known during the Renaissance and sketched by numerous visitors to Rome, the statue was then thought to represent a female, occasionally identified as Cleopatra or an allegory of Rome. Here da Carpi completed the figure to include its hands and lower arms, which were missing at the time the drawing was made. In 1546 Fabio Sassi and his brother Decidio sold their collection of antiquities to Ottavio Farnese, and the sculpture was moved to Palazzo Farnese.