Classical Frieze with Satyrs, Putti and Other Figures

The drawing is by the same hand as inv. IV, 33a and the two may well once have formed part of a single long frieze, with IV, 33 at left, a central section now cut away, and IV, 33a lining up to the right. The drawings clearly relate to antique reliefs, probably from Roman sarcophagi. Either the sheets copy an as yet unidentified antique relief, or they are an artist’s imaginative restoration of a relief only preserved in small parts, which could account for the apparently nonsensical subject matter, or the subject could be an entirely free invention only inspired by antiquity.

In Fairfax Murray’s time the drawings were given to Bambaia (Busto Arsizio, ca. 1483 – 1548 Milan); in 1947 Philip Pouncey put forward the name of Baldassare Peruzzi; he later compared the drawing to reliefs preserved on the ground floor of Villa Farnesina, from ca. 1510. The style of the drawings is, however, closer to the work of Amico Aspertini, and if not by him, as Marzia Faietti maintains, certainly by an artist from his circle.