Two figures seen from behind

A facsimile etching of a drawing depicting two standing men seen from behind now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 21 recto). See RCIN 854660 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, title and numbered within the plate at top right: XX.

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 by Luigi Celotti 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).