A Selection of master drawings 2014

today as Vestibolo Quadrato of the Pio-Clementino Museum in
the Vatican (1776). Here, Unterperger, after having skillfully
restored and completed the previous sixteenth-century frescoes
with scenes connected to the theme of water, he inserted
completely new creations. To decorate the arch of the niche and
of the window he chose mythological and imaginary figures of
tritons, winged griffins and dragons. Today only the Struggle
between tritons and winged griffins 4 is still in situ. To confirm
such assertion our sketch can be compared to the other two
preparatory studies entitled Struggle between tritons and griffins 5
held at the Pinacoteca Comunale of Montefortino, which - as
Röttgen pointed out in 1972 6 - are to be considered the models
for the decoration of the niche of the Atrio del Torso. The spirit
animating these three works is identical. They are devised with
dynamism and characterized by a complex composition and a
skillful definition of the bodies of the tritons: in the first two
studies the tritons are still struggling against the griffins, while
in our tempera they are already triumphant and dragging a
griffin into the water, almost as a trophy and as a symbol of
their superiority. The colours are deep and measured. In the
execution of these sketches our artist demonstrates a great
ability both from a technical and stylistic point of view but
also from an iconographical one. Unterperger’ s fame as an
artist of grotesque was such that he was chosen to make the
encaustic copy of Raphael’s Loggias, commissioned by tsarina
Catherine II of Russia in 1779.