Attributed to Battista FRANCO

This drawing of a single-humped Arabian camel, or dromedary, is a version or copy of a red chalk drawing by Battista Franco in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which has been dated by Anne Varick Lauder to the late 1530s or early 1540s. The dromedary seen here does not, however, appear in any extant paintings by Franco. Other studies of dromedaries by Franco, executed in pen and ink, are found on both sides of a drawing in the British Museum.

Dromedaries appear only very rarely in 16th century Italian art. This drawing can be compared with two other red chalk studies of dromedaries of the period; one in the collection of Christ Church in Oxford and the other in the Louvre in Paris. All three drawings have, at one time or another, been attributed to the 16th century Florentine sculptor and draughtsman Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560). Another drawing of a dromedary of the same approximate date is found in a study by Parmigianino (1503-1540) of the animal at rest, in the Goldman collection in Chicago. 

Alternative attributions to an artist in the circles of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) or Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) have been suggested for the present sheet.