Study of a bearded man: design for a telamon (recto); Study of a head and a butterfly (verso, by a different hand)

The drawing can be associated with a group of at least twelve other designs for caryatids and telamons in the same technique and style (see Lelio Orsi 1511-1587, exhib. cat., Reggio Emilia, Teatro Valli, 1988, nos. 99-100, ill.; Sotheby's, London, 9 July 2003, lot 5; Sotheby's, London, 3 July 2013, lot 16; and J.-C. Baudequin, De Carlo Portelli à Émile Bernard, exhib. cat., Paris, Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière, 2016, p. 6, ill.). These studies, now scattered in museums and private collections, appear to be related to the decoration of the Casino di Sopra in Novellara, which Lelio Orsi undertook from 1558 for Count Camillo Gonzaga (M. Pirondini, ‘Lelio Orsi, aggiornamenti ed inediti’, in Orsi a Novellara. Un grande manierista in una piccola corte. Atti della giornata di studi, Novellara, 2012, pp. 25-39). The frescoes were removed in 1845 and, after various vicissitudes, only part of them were acquired by the Italian State and are currently on deposit at the Museo Gonzaga in Novellara. The decoration, inspired by the palace façades seen by Orsi in Rome, had a complex iconography, combining allegories, architectural elements decorated with caryatids and telamons in grisaille, figures of deities, and busts in fictive niches. A drawing in the collection of The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, makes it possible to visualize a similar elaborate decorative scheme devised by the artist at that time (inv. no. 1973.34; Drawings from New York Collections. The Italian Renaissance, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966, no. 106, ill).