BACCIO BANDINELLI (FLORENCE 1493-1560)

As Roger Ward pointed out (op. cit., p. 29), the present drawing is closely related to the upper left part of the frieze representing putti at play in Donatello's bronze relief The Lamentation of Christ on the Gospel pulpit in the south aisle of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence. The putto in the center holding a cornucopia in his left hand, the one to his left bending forward, and the one kneeling on his right are almost identical in both works. Bandinelli just replaced the base on which the middle putto stands with a tortoise. The second putto from the right running to the right can also be found in both works. Dr. Ward suggested that Bandinelli most probably did not work directly from Donatello's relief, but that he, like Donatello himself, made use of an antique sarcophagus which was then in the collection of Matteo Strozzi in Florence, and is now in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.

As evidence of Bandinelli’s admiration for his great predecessor, three further drawings copying Donatello's reliefs in San Lorenzo are in the British Museum, London (Ward, op. cit., no. 10, ill.), in the Ashmolean Museum and in the Musée Condé, Chantilly. Similar studies of putti at play by Bandinelli appear on the recto of a drawing in the Fondazione Horne in Florence (L. Ragghianti Collobi, Disegni della Fondazione Horne in Firenze, exhib. cat., Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 1963, p. 10, no. 8, ill.) and another example is in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt (inv. 447; see Jacoby, op. cit., no. 34).