1546
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Poros Assailed by the Macedonian Army (recto); Sketches of Animals (verso) is a 1546 by Perino del Vaga, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see soldiers in a chaotic battle, swords raised, bodies twisting. On the back, quick animal sketches fill the page—horses, dogs, a lion. This was a practice sheet for a big wall painting in Rome. The artist studied Michelangelo’s figures, then tried poses in ink before painting them large. The man about to strike looks like a figure from the Sistine Chapel. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how light and shadow shape these quick, lively lines.
Perino del Vaga made this spirited pen and ink and wash drawing as a preliminary sketch for a fresco cycle depicting the military campaigns of Alexander the Great, intended for the apartments of Pope Paul III in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome. At the time, he was also working on commissions at the Vatican Palace where he studied and drew from the frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. One pose in the drawing, that of the man in front who, sword poised over his head, prepares to strike a man below, was probably inspired by Michelangelo’s rendering of David and Goliath on the ceiling.…
This artist was in Rome in 1527 when the troops of Charles V sacked the city, and was imprisoned and forced to pay a heavy ransom for his, his wife's, and his daughter's safe release.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Piero Bonaccorsi (1501 – October 19, 1547), known as Perino (or Perin) del Vaga, was an Italian painter and draughtsman of the Late Renaissance/Mannerism.
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