Lot 8: * LELIO ORSI NOVELLARA 1508 OR 1511 - 1587

bears inscription, lower right: Jules Romain.

RECTO: STUDY FOR A FRIEZE WITH A RIVER GOD AND NYMPHS AND THE EAGLE OF ZEUS;
VERSO: DESIGN FOR THE UPPER PART OF THE ENTABLATURE

8 5/16 by 15 1/16 in.; 211 by 382 mm.

pen and brown ink and wash heightened with white over black chalk (<EM>recto</EM>); pen and brown ink (<EM>verso)</EM>

P. Collin (probably with his paraphe, L.454, lower left - not that of Jabach, as suggested by inscription on the mount), his sale, Paris, Paillet, 21 February 1832, lot 34 (according to a French inscription on the verso);
C. Savelli (L.637, partly lost);
bears another unidentified collector's mark lower right

This previously unknown drawing seems to be closely connected with a study for a frieze representing a sacrifice to Jupiter, traditionally attributed to Lelio Orsi, now in a private collection (see Lelio Orsi, exhibition catalogue, Reggio Emilia, Teatro Valli, 5 December 1987-30 January 1988, cat. no. 27, illustrated). The latter has been dated to the mid 1550s and has, in turn, been linked with a group of studies of friezes, now in the Louvre. Formerly owned by Jabach, who attributed them to Maturino, the Louvre drawings were given to Lelio Orsi by Philip Pouncey. In the Reggio Emilia exhibition catalogue, Vittoria Romani endorsed Pouncey's attribution to Orsi, and suggested that since the strong Roman influences of Michelangelo, Raphael and Polidoro are extremely evident in all these drawings, they must date from after the artist's trip to Rome at the end of the 1540s (see: Lelio Orsi, op.cit., cat. nos. 10-13, 19-26, all illustrated). It is also interesting to note the old inscription attributing the present drawing to Giulio Romano, whose style was enormously influential in the formation of that of Lelio Orsi.