Getty Museum

Studies of Figures and Architecture (recto); Figure Studies (verso)

Creator

Italian Artist · 1501–1547

Born Pietro Buonaccorsi, Perino del Vaga received his early training in Florence under a friend of Raphael. About 1516 he traveled to Rome with a painter called Vaga, from whom he took his name. Two years later he was recruited into Raphael's studio. While collaborating on the Vatican Logge, Perino learned about stucco work and designing grotesques. After spending two years in Florence to escape t

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Date: about 1542–1545
Medium: Pen and brown ink, brush with brown and gray wash, traces of black chalk; partly incised for transfer (recto); pen and brown ink and brown wash (verso)
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 7a141f83-065c-4b58-a565-6017d1fa1d1b

From the Getty Museum record

Perino del Vaga covered both sides of this sheet with drawings of figures and architecture. On the recto, he first made the six smaller figures that fit around the architectural ovals in the lower two-thirds of the drawing. Given the individualized nature of their attributes and poses, he seems to have intended them all for specific locations in a domed vault, although none of them relate to any of Perino's known works. The four heads in profile at the top of the recto and the one at the top center of the verso differ in several ways; they were all drawn later than the other sketches. The later drawings are all much more lightly shaded with pale strokes of wash, and each profile wears an elaborate, fanciful hat or headdress and an exaggerated expression approaching caricature. These figures may represent costumed characters in a ballet or theatrical display. Scholars have not yet determined the purpose of the five other heavily shaded figures on the verso, two of whom seem to be in close discussion at the bottom left.

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