Folio from the Gozzoli Album: Two Classical Entablatures, Striding Horse Seen from Behind

Author: Albert Elen

This is a folio from a hypothetical lost drawing book, a remnant of which is now part of an eighteenth-century album called the Gozzoli Album, held in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. For a general description, see here.

This page was originally folio 4 verso in the hypothetical lost volume (now a recto in the album).

Architectural details from Roman monuments were often recorded in late-medieval model books and also during the Renaissance. Early prototypes for our drawings are found in a drawing by Pisanello, now in Paris.^[1] For the architectural drawings on both sides of this sheet (see also folio 15 verso) the draughtsman used a ruler and a sharp stylus, which can be observed from the indented straight lines, visible in raking light (fig.).

The horse in rear view is related to the horses in various poses in Gozzoli’s fresco cycle in the Cappella dei Magi in Palazzo Medici, Florence, which also go back to prototypes by Pisanello.

A very similar drawing of classical entablatures, also listed as a work from the Gozzoli workshop and probably originating from the same lost volume, is now in Vienna.^[2]