A bacchanal with Venus and Cupid, Pan playing his pipes with satyrs

The fluid pen and ink style of this fascinating mythological scene can be associated with the earliest draftsmanship of the Cavaliere d’Arpino. Strongly inspired by the graphic manner of the Alberti brothers, the sheet is an exuberant expression of Cesari’s precocious talent as a draftsman and relates to several ink drawings executed during or shortly after his involvement in the decoration of the Sala degli Svizzeri in the Vatican (1583), carried out by the young Arpino under the direction of Giovanni Alberti (1558-1601). The closest resemblance can be found in a similar mythological scene depicting Apollo and Marsyas recently on the art market (Jean-Luc Baroni, An Exhibition of Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, New York and London, 2004, no. 11, ill.).

The present sheet was likely kept for decades in Cesari’s studio and copied by a member of his workshop - possibly the artist's son, Muzio Cesari - in a red-chalk drawing of almost the same size in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin (Fig. 1; inv. 15858; A. Bertini, I disegni italiani della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, Rome 1958, no. 120).

Fig. 1. Workshop of Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d'Arpino Two satyrs with a nymph and a dancing putto, Biblioteca Reale, Turin.