Overdoor Decoration

The Alberti brothers Giovanni and Cherubino were leading decorative artists towards the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth. They distinguished themselves in large-scale frescoes in Rome, where they collaborated on numerous decorative projects. The strong foreshortening exhibited by some of the putti and the detailed shading of the broken pediment in the upper right of the recto of this drawing indicate that these preliminary designs were intended as fictive architecture. Plump cherubs feature as leitmotifs in the work of the Alberti brothers, in fact, the lunette-shaped flap pasted on the recto hides an additional angel. Likewise, a flying angel bearing a martyr's palm appears prominently on the overdoor decoration on the verso of the sheet.