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Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
ALONSO BERRUGUETE (ATTRIBUTED TO) The Iron Age<>.
Pen and brown ink on cream laid paper. 203x315 mm; 8x12 3/8 inches. Numbered 6 in ink, upper right recto. Ex-collection Alfred Beurdeley (Lugt 421, lower left recto) and Ferruccio Asta (Lugt supplement 116a, lower right recto).
This design for a lunette seems to represent the last of the Four Ages of the World , the so called Iron Age (Ovid Metamorphoses<> 1,89 ff.). In this period, war and murder dominate the world whereas religion, still represented by the altar and scene of offering at top centre, does not play an important role any longer. Rarely has the subject been represented. A later example for its representation by a fight with clubs can be found in Johann Wilhelm Baur's etchings for Ovid of 1639-41.
The idiosyncratic style of figures and drapery suggests a Spanish artist of the first half of the 16th-century. Similarities to drawings by Pedro Machuca and Arnao di Bruselas exist as well. The sense of movement in the figures and the treatment of landscape, however, seem closer to Berruguete (1486/90-1561) at a moment when he was influenced by Fra Bartolomeo (See Corpus of Spanish Drawings 1400-1600<>, plate XXIII ff.).
