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20-05-2026

The Story of Niobe

1575 - 1580. Pencil ground, Wash, Pencil, Grey-brown ink, White lead on paper attached to canvas.
Not on display

This is one of the few copies to survive showing the whole of Polidoro´s famous frieze with the Story of Niobe, painted below the windows of the first floor of the Palazzo Milesi, Via della Maschera d´Oro, Rome. The decoration of the façade of the Palazzo Milesi in 1526-27 is the last in Polidoro´s great sequence of palace façade decorations carried out in Rome in the first half of the 1520s, before the sacking of the city in 1527 and the painter´s consequent flight to Naples. Although a few fragments from the original decoration have been brought back to light thanks to recent, clever restoration, the decoration is to all intents and purposes lost. For an engraving by Enrico Maccari of the whole of Polidoro´s façade decoration of the Palazzo Milesi. The style of the present drawing points to a copyist active in Rome around 1575-80, conceivably Avanzino Nucci (1551-1629), the artist now thought responsible for the socalled Polidoro album in the Fondation Custodia, the Institut Néerlandais, Paris.

Technical data

Related artworks

Apollo Shooting Arrows at the Children of Niobe
Pencil on blue paper, XVIII century
Anonymous - (Copy after - Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Inventory number
D003828
Author
Anonymous (Copy: Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Title
The Story of Niobe
Date
1575 - 1580
Technique
Pencil ground; Wash; Pencil; Grey-brown ink; White lead
Support
Paper attached to canvas
Dimension
Alto segundo soporte: 51.8 cm; Height: 195 mm; Width: 2342.0002 mm; Ancho segundo soporte: 268 cm
Provenance
Carlo Maratti, Roma; A. Procaccini; Royal Collection

Bibliography +

Katalan, J., Avanzino Nucci and the Polidoro Album, XXVIII, 1990.

Aterido Fernández, A.; Martínez Cuesta, J.; Pérez Preciado, J. J., Colecciones de pinturas de Felipe V e Isabel Farnesio: inventarios reales, II, Fundación de Apoyo de la Historia, Madrid, 2004, pp. 28.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Catálogo de dibujos. Dibujos italianos del siglo XVI (por Nicholas Turner, con la colaboración de José Manuel Matilla), V, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2004, pp. 364.

Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Art Services International, Chicago, 2008, pp. 364.

Other inventories +

Inv. Felipe V, La Granja, 1746. Núm. 417.
417. Un Dibujo original en Papel pegado en Lienzo, de mano de Polidoro de Carabacho: en el medio de Ydolo con su Ara, como para hacer Sacrificio, y a un lado Apolo y Diana asaeteando los Hijos de Niobe. Tiene once dedos de alto, dos varas, y tres quartas de ancho. Marco dorado liso...1

Inv. Real Museo, Sección Dibujos, 1857. Núm. 13.
Otro idem [dibujo] de un bajo relieve, antiguo, de asunto y autor desconocido. Alto ocho y media pulgadas; largo ocho pies y ocho pulgadas. Marco dorado liso.

Inv. General, Sección 3ª. Dibujos, grabados, acuarelas y miniaturas, 1879. Núm. 105.
105. Friso representando un asunto de las Metamorfosis de Ovidio. A. Polidoro Caravaggio - Alto 0,20 ancho 2,35 - marco negro y cristal-

Inv. Dibujos, Fondo Antiguo. Núm. S/N.

Inscriptions +

X
Cross of Burgundy or Cross of Saint Andrew, collection’s mark belonged to King Felipe V. Front, lower right corner

113
Inscribed in pen and black ink. Front, lower left corner

Ite [...] iatis [...] trovare [?] saetis lauriemq[ue] capillis / [...] Latona turba [...] distabat ab urba / Talibus est [...] / An Dea sim dubiter p[er] que omnia secula [...] / Apollo et Diana Thebas vetuentes, universo
Inscribed in pen and black ink. Front, lower area

Update date: 20-05-2026 | Registry created on 28-04-2015

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