A design for a bed

A photograph of a pen and ink drawing depicting a design for a bed now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1846.20), where it is catalogued as by Baccio Bandinelli. Annotated on the verso.

This drawing was previously in Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection and it was then attributed to Raphael. Passavant dismissed this attribution and Robinson was the first to suggest the name of Bandinelli for this design. Nevertheless, a number of scholars debated the author and the function of this drawing, proposing Sodoma as a possible draughtsman and his fresco of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana in the Villa Farnesina. The current attribution to Bandinelli has been mainly accepted by the scholars and it has been suggested that the drawing could be a study for a detail in the relief of the Birth of the Virgin, in the Casa Santa at Loreto, completed by Montelupo. If this theory is right, the drawing would be dated about 1518-1519, when Bandinelli is documented at Loreto's workshop (see Bibliographic References).