Raphael, The Dream of
Scipio or Vision of a
Knight, a drawing
Italy, around AD 1504
This drawing in pen and brown ink is a
cartoon
for a painting by Raphael in the National Gallery, London, probably
originally made for the court at Urbino. The edges of the figures
in the drawing were pricked with a sharp stylus to allow the design
to be transferred to the panel. Black charcoal dust in a bag was
banged onto the drawing so that the design came through the holes
onto the panel in a series of dots. The knight and parts of the
female figures are the most finished, drawn with
cross-hatching
to show the depth of the shading. The landscape in the background
is sketched loosely while the trunk and branches of the tree are in
barest outline.
The subject
seems to be related to
Punica, an epic poem on
the Punic War by the Latin poet Silius Italicus. The young Scipio
Africanus (236-184 BC) slept beneath a bay tree where he dreamt
that he was the subject of a contest between Virtue and Pleasure.
On the left, Virtue holds a sword and book, perhaps referring to
the knight's hopes as a soldier and scholar, while Pleasure
on the right holds a flower for his role as a lover. It was common
in courtly literature for a young knight to aspire to be all three
of these.
N. Turner, Italian drawings in the Depa-4 (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)
P. Joannides, The drawings of Raphael (Phaidon, 1983)
J.A Gere and N. Turner, Drawings by Raphael, from the, exh. cat. (London, The British Museum Press, 1983)