A view of a hilly town

A photograph reproducing a pen and ink drawing depicting a view of a hilly town now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 75 verso). This drawing is on the verso of a sheet depicting various sketches. Annotated on the verso.

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) notes that this view continues into one depicted on another sheet of the 'Libretto Veneziano' (a photograph of which can be found at RCIN 854526). The town shown here was previously identified as Gubbio, Urbino or Narni, without scholars reaching a consensus. It is now believed to be a view of a town in Umbria, probably based on a Raphaelesque drawing, either depicting a real view or a combination of various imagined views. 

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).