Record of a lost frieze from the Palazzo Milesi, Rome

Code: 10163

Dimensions:

Ferdinand Piloty (1785-1844) after Polidoro da Caravaggio (Polidoro Caldara) (c.1499–1543)
“Left hand portion of a frieze on the Palazzo Milesi, Rome, representing the Vengeance of Apollo on Niobe"
Published, Munich], Circa 1811
Lithographic print
22.5 cm x 26.4 cm

Lettered "Polidoro." "F. Pilotj del."

The image is a lithographic copy of a drawing of part of the left hand portion of Polidoro's famous Niobid Frieze (now lost) which depicted the Story of Niobe. This was painted beneath the windows of the first floor of the Palazzo Milesi, Via della Maschera d´Oro, Rome.  In this portion of the frieze, people carry offerings in a procession which moves towards the right.

The frieze was the last in Polidoro´s great sequence of decorative schemes for palace façades in Rome which he carried out in the first half of the 1520s, before the city was sacked in 1527 and he subsequently fled to Naples. 

Not in BM
See Wellcome Library no. 524671i for another version