A standing lion

A facsimile etching of a drawing depicting a standing lion now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 35 verso). See RCIN 854507 for a photograph of the drawing. This print was catalogued by Ruland (1876) as having been 'published by Celotti'; by this he was presumably referring to Luigi Celotti's 'Disegni originali di Raffaello Sanzio, per la prima volta pubblicati (da Luigi Celotti), esistenti nella Imperial Regia Accademia di belle arti di Venezia' (1829). Lettered with attribution of the drawing to Raphael, and numbered within the plate at top right: VI. 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).