Horatius Cocles Defending The Sublician Bridge and Marcus Curtius Leaping into the Chasm

Author: Rhoda Eitel-Porter

Despite some indication of a continuous ground line between the two halves of the sheet, the drawing seems to comprise two scenes. At left we see a soldier on a bridge, presumably the legendary Roman hero Horatius Cocles, and at right another fully armed soldier on a leaping horse, probably Marcus Curtius. Horatius Cocles famously defended a bridge over the Tiber when Rome was attacked by invading Etruscans, holding off the enemy while other Romans destroyed the structure behind him, thus halting the advance and saving Rome.^[1] Marcus Curtius similarly sacrificed himself for his people by riding his horse into a chasm when he recognized that the gods’ demand for Rome’s greatest treasure referred to their courageous youth.^[2] Engraved in about 1509 by Marcantonio Raimondi (c.1480-before 1534), both episodes often featured as part of a series of exemplars of heroic self-sacrifice popular in the Renaissance.^[3] Occasionally Horatius Cocles is shown on horseback – Raimondi’s engraving is one such example – and hence the Rotterdam sheet might show two alternatives rather than distinct vignettes, although this seems less likely.

Franz Koenigs acquired the drawing in 1926 with an attribution to an unknown Florentine artist active in the second half of the fifteenth century. Its precise, restrained draughtsmanship, the slightly stiff articulation of the limbs – as seen for instance in the arm of the rider bearing the sword and the legs of the standing soldier – and a certain naturalism in some of the details, such as the wooden planks and brickwork of the bridge, suggest instead a northern Italian artist. In an undated note on the mount, Carmen Bambach proposed a Lombard origin or one from the Veneto, followed by an anonymous suggestion of Bernardino da Parenzo also known as Bernardo Parentino (c.1450-c.1500), who like Jacopo Ripanda (deceased c.1516), had a strong antiquarian vein. Yet the drawing exhibits none of the relief-like structure, detailed fussiness, horror vacui, pronounced antiquarianism or fantastical elements associated with the work of these artists.^[4] A Paduan follower of Squarcione (1397-1468) was suggested anonymously by another visitor and there are also reminiscences of drawings attributed to Marcantonio Raimondi as seen in the light touch of the careful and feathery outlines and areas of hatching without wash. The creator of this sheet is likely an artist of their generation working in northern Italy, possibly having spent some time in Padua, where Squarcione had a large workshop.