Marco Marchetti, called Marco da Faenza

With Enrico Cortona, Milan, Disegni e dipinti di maestri antichi.., 1985, no. 5, reproduced;
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1987, lot 76

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings, 1990, no. 70, reproduced p. 212

 

Hinged at the top. Overall in good condition and media fresh. Some light staining along the right margin and a brown spot covered with white body color towards the left margin on the middle. Sold mounted and framed in a modern wooden and gilded frame.
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This appears to be a study for a wall decoration in a palace, as yet unidentified, and linked to a Medici commission.  The coat-of-arms to the right, flanked by two allegorical figures, is that of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany as Grand Masters of the Order of Santo Stefano.  The order was founded in 1561 by Cosimo I, and the last of the Medici to be a Grand Master was Gian Gastone in 1737.  As William Griswold suggested in the Metropolitan exhibition, this modello must be linked to one of the various projects carried out by Vasari and his assistants for the Medici, possibly for Cosimo I or his son Francesco, who died in 1587.

Marco Marchetti, a painter who specialized in fanciful grottesche, was very active in Rome before joining Vasari in Florence, with whom he collaborated on several projects, including the decoration of many rooms in Palazzo Vecchio.¹  As also noted in the Metropolitan exhibition, the headquarters of the order of Santo Stefano was in Palazzo dei Cavalieri (della Carovana), Pisa, which was remodelled during the early 1560s under the supervision of Vasari.

1.  J. A. Gere and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Artists working in Rome, c. 1550 to c. 1640, London 1983, p. 123