A standing lion

A photograph of a drawing depicting a standing lion now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 35 verso). This drawing is on the verso of a sheet depicting men on horseback (see RCIN 854272 for a photograph of the recto). Annotated on 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' by Perugino (formerly in the Wantage Collection and reproduced in the catalogue of the drawings of the Gallerie dell'Accademia). Another similar lion is depicted in the frescoes of Ca' Giardino, Urbino, which some scholars have suggested are by the young Raphael.

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).