Lelio Orsi

Hinged to the mount at upper margin. A thin strip of paper on the verso running down the length of the right margin. Some light staining at the outer margins, recto. A small crease in the paper upper right corner. Medium remains fresh, pen and ink strong.
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This can be associated with a group of designs for caryatids and telamons.  A telamon, in architectural terms, is a large male figure that serves as a column.  These figures would have been used by Orsi in the decorations he painted on palace façades in Novellara.  Unfortunately these exterior frescoes have not survived, but through a drawing in the Janos Scholz collection we can envisage the elaborate schemes he devised.¹

A similar pen and ink drawing for a caryatid is in the Seattle Art Museum² and two others were sold in these Rooms in 2003.³  Further pen and ink studies for telamon figures are in a private collection and were included in the Lelio Orsi exhibition in 1987.⁴

1.  Drawings from New York Collections: The Italian Renaissance, exhib. cat, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966, p. 65, no. 106, reproduced
2.  Project for two telamons and one caryatid, Seattle Art Museum, inv. no. 58.131 It. 30
3.  Sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 2003, lot 5
4.  Lelio Orsi, exhib. cat., Reggio Emilia, Teatro Valli, 1987-8, p. 115, no. 100, reproduced