A Sibyl holding tablets (recto); Design for a ceiling with tritons, putti and a coat of arms (verso)

A contemporary of the architects Andrea Palladio and Michele Sanmicheli, Bernardino India executed numerous fresco decorations in villas and palaces in his native Verona and in other territories of the Venetian terraferma. The sybil on this sheet could have been a preparatory sketch for a figure in a fresco decoration, as a similar figure appears in a small sketch as a detail in an architectural drawing by Palladio in the Museo Civico in Vicenza (Cinquant’anni di pittura veronese 1580-1630, exhib. cat., Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, 1974, fig. 75). The verso of the sheet presents a study for an elaborate ceiling decoration with, at the center, a coat of arms that can be connected with the noble Avogrado family from Brescia.