A section of an ancient wall 

A photograph reproducing a pen and ink drawing depicting a section of an ancient wall now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 72 recto). This drawing features a view of a town on the verso (see RCIN 854530 for a photograph of the verso). Annotated on the verso.

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) notes that Giuseppe Bossi, a previous owner of the Libretto Veneziano, believed this drawing to depict a section of the famous Etruscan walls of Volterra.

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).