Study of the head of a horse and a stirrups

In the first decades of the last century, the drawing was believed to be by Titian and was connected with his painting of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in the Escorial. The style of this study and the initials at bottom right, however, indicate that the drawing is by the Florentine painter Pietro Dandini. Many sheets from the workshop of the Dandini family were marked with the initials of their authors. A large number of these sheets was dispersed on the London art market in 1931 (see S. Benassai, ‘Disegni di Cesare e Pietro Dandini dalla raccolta Dandini-Targioni Tozzetti’, in M. Betti and C. Brovadan, Donum, Florence, 2020, pp. 97-98).