A study for the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana

A photograph of a red chalk drawing now in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 17634), where it is attributed to Raphael (c.1517). This is a study of the nude figures of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana.

There are two photographs of this drawing in the Raphael Collection (see also RCIN 854039), but just one of them is catalogued by Ruland (1876) and the other is listed as an addition in the master copy of the catalogue. Nevertheless, both of them are pasted on folio sheets and the organisation of the Raphael Collection is believed to have been largely completed by 1876.

A number of Raphaelesque drawings of this scene, including this one, have been related by some scholars to a lost drawing by Raphael for the "Sala di Alexander e Roxana" in the Villa Farnesina, which was frescoed by Sodoma with many differences. This theme was also frescoed in Raphael's Villa, the so-called Casino Raffaello and the detached fresco is in the Galleria Borghese (inv. no. 303). This building — a small summer-house, also known as the Casino Olgiati — was destroyed in the siege of Rome in 1849 and used to be in the Galoppatoio area of the present-day Borghese Park. Ruland (1876) notes that: "the three principal frescoes have been removed before". In the life of Raphael written by Quatremere de Quincy and translated into Italian by Francesco Longhena in 1829, it is noted that seven prints after the paintings of this Villa were made by Francesco Saverio Gonzales, five of which are in the Royal Collection (see RCINs 854035.a-d and 854037). Longhena also writes that in the Villa there was a portrait of La Fornarina, the fresco of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana, representations of the Vices with arrows and the Sacrifice of Flora on the ceiling.

This fresco derives from Luciano's story in the dialogue "Herodotus sive Action".