DescriptionThis study for an unexecuted equestrian monument by the Florentine painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith Antonio Pollaiuolo is among the most celebrated drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, who owned the sheet in the sixteenth century (and who is believed to have added the dark brown wash around the figures), the sculpture was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, in honor of his father, Francesco Sforza. The subject of a victorious ruler on horseback is drawn from classical antiquity.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and MarkingsInscriptions: Annotated in pen and brown ink at right in a sixteenth-century hand: Gatamel

ProvenanceGiorgio Vasari; Simon Meller, Budapest and Paris (?); Philip Hofer, Cambridge, Massachusetts; acquired from Philip Hofer by Robert Lehman in 1948