Francesco de' Rossi, called Francesco Salviati

E. Desperet (L.721);
sale, Monaco, Sotheby's, 2 December 1988, lot 312 (as Italian School, 16th Century);
with Yvonne Tan Bunzl, London, Master Drawings, 1990, no. 2 (as Francesco Salviati)

Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Francesco Salviati o la Bella Maniera, exhib. cat., Rome, Villa Medici, et al., 1998, p. 95, under no. 7

Crease along bottom edge at right and tear?/crease up right edge from bottom.
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This drawing is comparable in size, technique and style to a drawing in the Louvre, A Woman in Antique Dress, Holding a Lyre,¹ which derives from a figure on a sarcophagus formerly in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.  Catherine Monbeig Goguel suggests that the present figure is a looser Mannerist adaptation of an antique prototype such as a Tanagra figurine, rather than a strict copy.  She considers both to be early works, from the end of Salviati's Roman years, between 1535-38. The similarities are so great that it is tempting to think these drawings were a pair.

1. Literature, op. cit., no. 7