Lot Essay
The present drawing is a copy of the marble relief called the Suovetaurilia Procession, now in the Louvre, known in Rome since the end of the 15th Century, P.P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford, 1986, no. 190, illustrated. This relief was probably in the collection of Cardinal Domenico Grimani in the Palazzo San Marco in Venice. It was given to the Library of San Marco in 1589 where it was displayed over the door of the Statuario Pubblico. It was removed to the Louvre by Napoleon in 1797. The face of the tall priest was so damaged that it frequently was confused during the Renaissance with the figure of a woman. Copies of the relief are known by Aspertini in the British Museum, by anonymous Italian hands at Bayonne, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and in the Duperac Album in the Louvre