- Museum number
- 1889,0527.82
- Description
-
'The Florentine Picture-Chronicle', page from the album (recto of 1889,0527.83): Cassandra turned to the right, holding a book and Penthesileia in armour with her sword raised
Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk
- Production date
- 1470-1475 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 326 millimetres
-
Width: 226 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Watermark: Gothic R
Cassandra was the daughter of Priam.She was skilled in the art of prophecy, but condemned by Apollo never to be taken seriously. Her warning that the Greeks would capture Troy went unheeded. She was raped by the Greek Ajax the lesser, and then carried off as a concubine by Agamemnon. They were murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Penthesila (Penthesileia) was the queen of the Amazons who came to the aid of Troy after the death of Hector. She fought with distinction but was eventually killed by Achilles, who grieved over her body.
Lit. : S. Colvin, A Florentine Picture Chronicle, London, 1898; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 274, II, pls. CCXXXVII-CCXLI.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
BM, 'Padua in the 1450s', 1998, no. 16
- Acquisition date
- 1889
- Acquisition notes
- Popham & Pouncey 1950
The leaves of the book, in its present state, seem to be numbered 5 to 59 in a seventeenth(?)-century hand; the numbers, in the r.-hand top corner, have in many cases been partly trimmed away. The book was broken up by Ruskin, who was in the habit of lending parts of his books and manuscripts to friends and institutions in which he was interested, with the result that when the Museum purchased it from him in 1889 it contained only 49 folios. Of the remainder, two (1890,0314.1-4. Folios 13 and 14) were presented the next year by the trustees of the Ruskin Museum, Sheffield, and four (1900,0526.1-8. Folios 9, 22, 36, and 47) in 1900 by Ruskin's cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn; folios 1 to 4 are missing, but there is nothing to indicate that they were not removed before Ruskin acquired the book.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1889,0527.82