Martyrdom of St. Laurence
XVI century. Pencil ground, Wash, Pencil, Grey-brown ink on paper.Not on display
The composition resembles in reverse the lower half of Cambiaso´s great altarpiece in the monastery of San Lorenzo, El Escorial (now Sala de Capas), painted in Genoa and dispatched in 1581, two years before the artist himself transferred to Spain as court painter to Philip II. The altarpiece did not remain for long over the high altar of the basilica, being substituted at some point between 1586 and 1588 by another by Federico Zuccaro (1540/41-1609); this is turn was replaced by a third by Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527-1596). Other variants for the design of this section of the composition, apparently autograph, include drawings in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (inv. no. D-1853); and the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London (inv. no. 14).
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracc: a century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Virginia, Art Services International, 2008, p.256-257
