Design for an elaborate tomb
XVI century. Wash, Pencil, Pencil ground, Grey-brown ink on brown paper.Not on display
The attribution to Cellini was evidently maintained while the drawing was in Brun´s (?) collection, and afterwards in that of Fernández Durán. The bust of the bearded man in the oval niche within the aedicule at the top of the monument holds the key to the identification of the individual commemorated. Also memorialized in the tomb are two women, busts of whom appear below in the oval niches to the left and right respectively. Three female allegories occupy the niches in the middle register. The panels in the center and left are inscribed epitaphio, to indicate where the inscriptions were to be placed. Although Cellini´s authorship is surely fanciful, the drawing does seem to reflect an invention from Florentine sixteenth-century.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.292