E. Villata - Abstract

A little, unpublished red-chalk drawing, formerly belonging to the art historian Mario Salmi, is presented in this paper. It represents a nude soldier on a rearing horse, beating a flow to an enemy of which we can see only a very slight sketch. Salmi himself attributed, by his own hand, the sheet to Raphael, and this attribution seems very likely, by comparisons with other autograph drawings in Vienna, Budapest, Windsor and Bayonne.  The chronology seems about 1510 or very little later; here is presented the hypothesis that the sheet could be a first idea for the Eliodorus in the Vatican.