Lot Essay
The present sheet, unrecorded since Metz's engraving noted above, is related to Taddeo Zuccaro's fresco of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana (fig. 1.) part of a cycle of fifteen frescoes on the life of Alexander the Great in the Palazzo Caetani, Rome, around 1559-60, J.A. Gere, Taddeo Zuccaro. His Development Studied in His Drawings, London, 1969, p. 96, pl. 126b. The central part of the drawing corresponds with the fresco, whereas the left foreground shows a different solution for the group of playing putti.
The 18th Century attribution to Raphael recorded by C.M. Metz on his engraving can be explained by the fact that Taddeo's composition follows closely Raphael's rendering of the same subject known through a drawing at Windsor (A.E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty the King, London, 1949, no. 809, fig. 158), and an engraving by Gian Giacomo Caraglio after a drawing by Raphael, Illustrated Bartsch, XV, 95. From the engraving Zuccaro borrowed the motifs of the group of putti holding another putto on a shield and the putto peering through an armour; Raphael had taken the latter motif from Botticelli, although he reversed its direction. Taddeo also re-used the figure holding a torch in the background. Another version of the present drawing is mentioned by J.A. Gere (op. cit., no. 135) as in Herbert List's collection in Munich. That sheet is described as 'somewhat damaged and it is thus difficult to judge but it seems probably to be Taddeo's original', op. cit., p. 96.
A drawing by Taddeo of Alexander and Timoclea, for the same cycle, is in the Albertina, Vienna (V. Birke and J. Kertèsz, Die Italienishen Zeichnungen der Albertina, Vienna, 1994, Inv. 449, illustrated) and another representing Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot was formerly also in the collection of Herbert List, J.A. Gere, op. cit., nos. 236, 136, pl. 128a. Taddeo Zuccaro treated the story of Alexander the Great on at least two other occasions: on a façade of a house beside the church Santa Lucia della Tinta, Rome (now lost, circa 1550), and in the Castello Odescalchi in Bracciano, the latter executed approximately at the same time as the frescoes in the Palazzo Caetani.
The 18th Century attribution to Raphael recorded by C.M. Metz on his engraving can be explained by the fact that Taddeo's composition follows closely Raphael's rendering of the same subject known through a drawing at Windsor (A.E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty the King, London, 1949, no. 809, fig. 158), and an engraving by Gian Giacomo Caraglio after a drawing by Raphael, Illustrated Bartsch, XV, 95. From the engraving Zuccaro borrowed the motifs of the group of putti holding another putto on a shield and the putto peering through an armour; Raphael had taken the latter motif from Botticelli, although he reversed its direction. Taddeo also re-used the figure holding a torch in the background. Another version of the present drawing is mentioned by J.A. Gere (op. cit., no. 135) as in Herbert List's collection in Munich. That sheet is described as 'somewhat damaged and it is thus difficult to judge but it seems probably to be Taddeo's original', op. cit., p. 96.
A drawing by Taddeo of Alexander and Timoclea, for the same cycle, is in the Albertina, Vienna (V. Birke and J. Kertèsz, Die Italienishen Zeichnungen der Albertina, Vienna, 1994, Inv. 449, illustrated) and another representing Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot was formerly also in the collection of Herbert List, J.A. Gere, op. cit., nos. 236, 136, pl. 128a. Taddeo Zuccaro treated the story of Alexander the Great on at least two other occasions: on a façade of a house beside the church Santa Lucia della Tinta, Rome (now lost, circa 1550), and in the Castello Odescalchi in Bracciano, the latter executed approximately at the same time as the frescoes in the Palazzo Caetani.