Two figures seen from behind

A photograph of a drawing depicting two standing men seen from behind now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 21 recto). This drawing features a young man on the verso (see RCIN 854662 for a photograph of the verso). Annotated on the verso.

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) catalogued the figures depicted in this drawing as copies of those in the 'Baptism of Christ', frescoed c. 1482 by Pietro Perugino in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican. This drawing is squared up, although it has not been established whether this is actually to be attributed to a later hand, as the squaring up does not feature either in the etching published in 1829 by Luigi Celotti (see RCIN 854661 for it) or in the various known copies after this drawing.

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).