A lion

A photograph of a drawing depicting a lion now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 17 recto). This drawing features a study of a kneeling woman on the verso (see RCIN 851291 for a photograph of the verso).

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) described this drawing as Peruginesque in style, referring also to some paintings in which lions are depicted in a similar, though not identical, way. The most direct relationship is with the painting 'St Jerome and the Magdalene' by Perugino (now in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria and reproduced in the catalogue of the drawings of the Gallerie dell'Accademia). Other similar lions are in 'St Jerome in the desert' (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and in a 'Sacra Conversazione' (now at Chantilly), both considered as by Perugino's workshop.

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).