Lot 2: GUGLIELMO DELLA PORTA

GUGLIELMO DELLA PORTA PORLEZZA 1500 - 1577 ROME THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS Pen and brown ink over black chalk, within octagonal framing lines 137 by 135 mm

J. Bean and F. Stampfle, Drawings from New York Collections: The Italian Renaissance, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965-66, p. 67, under no. 111;
W. Gramburg, 'Vier Zeichnungen des Guglielmo della Porta zu seiner Serie mythologischen Reliefs', in Jahrbuch der Hambuger Kunstsammlungen, 1968, vol. 13, pp. 69-94, fig. 13;
J. Bean, 15υth and 16υth Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1982, p. 200, under no. 195

Erich Bier, Copenhagen;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1996, lot 51, where bought by the present owner

This is one of a group of four surviving drawings by della Porta which relate to a series of sixteen plaques representing scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The other drawings are: The Banquet of the Gods, in the Metropolitan Museum; The Fall of the Giants, in the Pierpont Morgan Library; and The Flaying of Marsyas in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A complete set of the plaques, which were cast in bronze by Jacob Cobaert, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Jacob Bean writes: 'Guglielmo's spidery draughtsmanship...owes much to Perino del Vaga with whom he collaborated in Genoa and Rome...'.υ1

The composition of this drawing is loosely based on Marcantonio Raimondi's print after Raphael.υ2

1. J. Bean, 1982, loc. cit.
2. G.B. Pezzini et al., Raphael Invenit, Rome 1985, p. 242, no. II.l, illus. p. 802