Getty Museum

Hunting Scene (recto); Two Studies of a Pair of Reclining River-Gods (?), a Sarcophagus Front (?) verso

Date

about 1510

Medium

Pen and brown ink with light brown wash

Culture

Italian

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

This receding composition shows an artist carefully combining landscape and figures and maintaining points of interest even in the distance. The unknown draftsman used hatching and cross-hatching to create form, shadow, and movement, showing his concern with arranging light and shadow. Through the sketchy, expressive pen work in the background, he achieved an effect of spontaneity. Scholars have tentatively identified the scene as the Hunt of Diana. The woman in profile at the lower left, wearing a wreath on her head and holding a bow, is probably Diana, and the nearly hidden figure with horns or antlers watching the nymphs bathing in the pool above her may be Actaeon. The awkward trimming of figures on both the right and the left indicates that the sheet was originally larger. On the verso, the two faintly drawn pairs of reclining male figures recall studies for the river gods that Michelangelo had intended to place at the base of a tomb in the Medici Chapel in Florence. The other lightly drawn study may be an antique Roman sarcophagus front.

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