Design for a Frieze with a Putto and Acanthus Leaves (c. 1520): Art, History and Details

Design for a Frieze with a Putto and Acanthus Leaves (c. 1520) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giulio Romano (Italian, 1492/99–1546).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

After working to fresco the papal apartments in Rome under Raphael in the 1510s, Giulio Romano became the court artist to Federico II Gonzaga, 1st Duke of Mantua (r. 1530–40), where his universal talents as an architect, designer, and painter transformed the duke’s unadorned Palazzo del Te into an elaborate setting for leisure and courtly activity. It was through drawings that Giulio planned everything from the most important narrative sequences of the palace, to the most seemingly insignificant ornamental details. This drawing—perhaps a design for a rinceaux, a frescoed decoration to the side or above a doorway—depicts Giulio’s typically inventive approach to classical ornament, with acanthus leaves that twirl together in a complex figure-eight pattern and a putto emerging from the floral center.

Object facts

• Title: Design for a Frieze with a Putto and Acanthus Leaves
• Date: c. 1520
• Creator attribution: Giulio Romano (Italian, 1492/99–1546)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink, red and black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 32.6 x 16.2 cm (12 13/16 x 6 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2020.70

A detail from the museum

The squares drawn on top of the design of this drawing indicate that it was transferred and resized to another medium such as fresco.

Collection credit

Anne Elizabeth Wilson Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Strasser, Nathalie. Dessins italiens de la Renaissance au siècle des lumières: collection Jean Bonna. 2010.
• S. L’Occaso. Giulio Romano ‘Universale’. Soluzioni decorative, fortuna delle invenzioni. Mantua, 2019

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.