Studies of a horse's head and raised arms

A print reproducing a drawing by Perino del Vaga, now in a private collection, which was previously attributed to Raphael and thought to be a study for the fresco The triumph of Galatea painted by Raphael in the loggia of the Villa Farnesina, Rome c.1512. Annotated on verso. Published as a drawing by Raphael in Charles Blanc, Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles: école ombrienne et romaine (Paris, 1870), p. 40.

Ruland (1876) noted that this drawing was 'probably' by Perino del Vaga rather than Raphael. It was attributed to Perino when it appeared at auction in 1986; in 1987 Linda Wolk-Simon published it as a sheet of studies for the decoration of the Loggia degli Eroi on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Doria in Genoa (see Bibliographic References for more information).

The triumph of Galatea was Raphael's first commission from the Papal banker Agostino Chigi for the Villa Farnesina; he later also frescoed the villa's entrance loggia, as well as working on the banker's chapels in Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Pace, both also in Rome. Raphael's literary source for his depiction of Galatea was a poem by Poliziano which celebrated the victory of Giuliano de'Medici in a joust of 1475. Contemporaneously, Sebastiano del Piombo painted a fresco adjacent to Raphael's, again based on Poliziano's poem, depicting the giant Polyphemus. It seems likely that a full cycle of frescoes was planned for the loggia but that this plan was abandoned, for reasons unknown.