The head of a satyr

This sheet comes from an album of drawings by Cavalier d’Arpino and his workshop, dispersed at auction in 1980 (Christie’s, London, 15 April 1980). This is a preparatory study for one of the grotesque heads in the fictive frame that surrounds the Battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii frescoed in Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome. In 1595 Giuseppe Cesari received the commission to decorate the Sala del Consiglio in Palazzo dei Conservatori with scenes of the history of Rome’s foundation. The project took almost fifty years to be completed and this preparatory study has been dated to around 1630, after the main scene with the battle was already completed (Röttgen, op. cit., pp. 78-79).