A shepherd playing the bagpipe

A photograph of a drawing depicting a shepherd playing a bagpipe now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 66 recto). This drawing features a depiction of various male heads on the verso (see RCIN 854425 for a photograph of the verso).

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) noted that the shepherd playing a bagpipe might be an invention by the young Raphael, who was probably inspired by various compositions by Luca Signorelli and other artists from Umbria. This drawing is very similar to one attributed to a member of the circle of Pietro Perugino now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no.WA1846.12; see RCIN 850499 for a photograph of this drawing and further information about it).

This drawing is part of the so-called "Libretto di Raffaello" or "Libretto Veneziano", 53 sheets that used to be mounted in a volume. After complicated negotiations, the sketchbook was bought by the museum in the 1820s, after the death of Giuseppe Bossi, who was its previous owner. A number of scholars debated the author of the drawings (with many names proposed, such as Pinturicchio, Antonio da Viterbo, Eusebio del Giorgio, Girolamo Genga) and their date. In 1984, the Gallerie dell'Accademia catalogued the drawings as by an artist contemporary to Raphael, whose juvenile works he copied in this sketchbook (see Bibliographic References).

A copy of this photograph (RCIN 850410) can be found in the Prince Consort's Raphael Collection, portfolio 5 (970564)