Circle of Filippino Lippi (Florence 1457-1504)

Closely comparable to a Design for a triumphal chariot, with similar harpies, which was attributed to Filippino by Bernard Berenson and has been dated by Innis Howe Shoemaker to around 1494, upon the artist's return to Florence from Rome (Woodner Collection; Grasselli, op. cit., no. 10). The present sheet was probably executed at the same period. This dating reflects the influence on both drawings of the classical grotesques which Filippino had had the opportunity to study during his Roman sojourn. A similar influence also appears in the fertile invention of the grisaille decorations painted in the Carafa Chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome and also, some years later, in the borders of Filippino's frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, painted in around 1502 (see P. Zambrano and J. Katz Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan, 2004, chapter 12). Shoemaker's date for the Woodner drawing also acknowledges Filippino's design of a similar chariot, representing The Triumph of Peace, for the ceremonial entry into Florence of King Charles VIII of France in 1494.