- Museum number
- 1889,0527.93
- Description
-
'The Florentine Picture-Chronicle', page from the album (verso of 1889,0527.92): queen Tomyris (?) seated on a throne with her right arm extended, the scene continued on the right-hand page (1889,0527.94)
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk (some ruled)
- Production date
- 1470-1475 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 326 millimetres
-
Width: 226 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Watermark: cardinal's hat
The identification of the figure as Tomyris is due to Colvin. The spelling of her name is eccentric, but there are other examples in the album of the artists struggling to write a foreign name. Queen Tomyris defeated Cyrus II in battle after she had been enraged, according to Herodotus, by the death of her son in his captivity (depicted in the previous opening). She is said to have cut off his head and put it into a bag full of blood to punish his bloodthirsty nature. In the drawing the Iranian king's fall is symbolised by the tumbling throne and Cyrus is shown in a lake rather than a bag.
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
- 1889,0527.93
