Circle of Bartolomeo Passarotti

Around a flayed body laid on a table, a crowd of artists leans in to study the muscles, and among them the Galleria Borghese recognises Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo and Daniele da Volterra, grouped by artistic lineage more than by date. The small canvas, about 39 by 54 centimetres, is filed under this name.

Circle of is a looser label than attributed to. It places a picture among painters close to a master, in his city and his time, without claiming his hand. The master here is Bartolomeo Passarotti, a Bolognese portrait painter of the later 16th century, also known for lively butcher's-shop and market scenes. A drawing in the Louvre, possibly by him, seems to be the model for the painting. Over the centuries the canvas has been given to five different artists, from Francesco Salviati in the inventory of 1693 to Federico Zuccari, a leading painter in Rome at the time. It was shown under the circle of Passarotti in Valladolid in 2018, and it has been in the Borghese collection since before 1633.