Baccio Bandinelli

Laid down. Many tears, including long tear from top edge down through shoulder of turning man; several tears on right edge around middle and two bottom edge. Another above, through and below legs of right hand corpse. Sheet clearly cut so composition reduced. Quite alot of wear. Several black ink stains lower right.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In this sheet, we see in the foreground the very typical male studies, characterised by a slightly pedantic precision, which are so familiar in Baccio Bandinelli's oeuvre, combined with rather more freely drawn figures behind. Although the sheet seems to have been trimmed on all sides, affecting our judgement of the composition, it remains a very sculptural image, and may well be a design for a relief. 

Roger Ward has kindly confirmed the attribution and suggests that the drawing may be related to Bandinelli's designs for a relief destined for the tomb of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the father of Cosimo I.  One, depicting a battle scene, is in Christ Church, Oxford, and the other is in Berlin.¹  Although the monument was never completed, Bandinelli worked on the project throughout the 1540s and early 1550s, the period to which Mr Ward suggests the present drawing should also be dated.

1.  See respectively, R. Ward, Baccio Bandinelli 1493-1560, Drawings from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1988, pp. 75-6, cat. no. 43, reproduced p.128 and R. Ward, Baccio Bandinelli as a Draughtsman, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, Courtauld Institute, 1982, no. 4, fig. 166