LUCA CAMBIASO (MONEGLIA 1527-1585 MADRID)

Annotated by the artist in pen and ink at the bottom 'Sole cadente', this dynamic composition depicts Apollo driving the chariot of dawn, seen from behind. The sheet finds a pendant in a drawing of similar size in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 62.168), annotated by Cambiaso 'sole oriente', to indicate the rising of the sun in the east. The two studies have been associated with the fresco decoration of the ceiling in the salone of Villa Giustiniani Cambiaso, Genoa, executed around 1552 by Cambiaso's associate Giovanni Battista Castello, il Bergamasco (1526-1569). There is a copy of this composition by an anonymous hand in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (inv. EBA 384).