Currently not on view
Study for a Decorative Wall Frieze with Telamons,
ca. 1570–75
These two decorative studies document the work of Marco Marchetti, an artist celebrated in his own time for fresco projects with lively and inventive grotesques, which he executed in palaces in Rome, Florence, and his hometown of Faenza. Both sketches are preliminary ideas for an elaborate wall frieze carried out by Marchetti for the Faenza residence of nobleman Cavalier Silvestro Rondinini.
These drawings are also important for the history of collecting: they were annotated by Father Sebastiano Resta, a renowned and discerning collector of drawings in seventeenth-century Italy. One of the sheets bears a letter written by Resta to Father Giuseppe Del Voglia in Palermo, urging him to include the drawings in his album of decorative drawings, as examples of Marchetti’s draftsmanship. In the letter, which is signed and dated 1691 and sent from Faenza, Resta explains that he had recently obtained these drawings from the local painter Tommaso Missiroli. Only in 1981 were the two studies reunited in Princeton.
Information
ca. 1570–75
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1981", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 41, no. 1 (1982): p. 16-31., p. 26
- Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 83, cat. no. 34; p. 84 (illus.); p. 86 (verso illus.)
