A Lioness and a Bull / Draped Figure
1530 - 1539.Not on display
The drawing represents a lion seated in profile towards the left, with the upper part of its body raised up and supported on its front legs; and a bull pawing the ground with its right hoof. The reverse shows, to the left, a figure, seen from the front, its head and feet cut off by the bottom and top of the sheet, respectively; and, to the right, an architectural study, with what appears to be part of the elevation of a facade containing a window or door. Judging from its style, the drawing is datable from the artist´s period in Messina in the 1530s. The handling of the chalk and arrangement of the studies side by side, horizontally on the same level, recall a drawing of a River-god and a Muse in the British Museum, London, formerly in the Lempereur collection (1895-9-15-742; Leone de Castris, 2001, p. 477, D 123). Leone de Castris has tentatively connected the British Museum drawing with the temporary decorations erected in Messina for the triumphal entry into the city of Charles V, in 1535. Given the similarity of the Prado drawing to the one in the British Museum, it is not impossible that they were both made for the same purpose.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.74
