Drawn with brown ink and black chalk on buff-colored paper, the whole bodies or parts of bodies of at least eleven muscular, nude men fight across this horizontally oriented sheet. In a vignette to the left, one man lifts a club high overhead as two men cower at his feet. Next to that, a man slices the head from a prone victim. Next, a man holds hands overhead as he pins another prone man on the ground with a foot to the neck. Others struggle to get up, lie injured, or swing weapons. One disembodied head is at the top center of the composition, and a pile of armor with a shield, a bow, quiver and arrows, and a sword are near the lower right corner. The four corners of the paper appear to have been cut and then the bits of paper replaced next to the main sheets.
Read the visual description

Drawn with brown ink and black chalk on buff-colored paper, the whole bodies or parts of bodies of at least eleven muscular, nude men fight across this horizontally oriented sheet. In a vignette to the left, one man lifts a club high overhead as two men cower at his feet. Next to that, a man slices the head from a prone victim. Next, a man holds hands overhead as he pins another prone man on the ground with a foot to the neck. Others struggle to get up, lie injured, or swing weapons. One disembodied head is at the top center of the composition, and a pile of armor with a shield, a bow, quiver and arrows, and a sword are near the lower right corner. The four corners of the paper appear to have been cut and then the bits of paper replaced next to the main sheets.

National Gallery of Art · Drawing

Battle of Nude Men

Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Medium
pen and brown ink over black chalk on four irregularly cut pieces of two types of buff laid paper; laid down and with corner pieces added
Dimensions
support: 14.1 x 25.2 cm (5 9/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Accession number
1984.3.57
Credit line
Julius S. Held Collection, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
Time span
1551 to 1600
Department
CG-E

Subjects and terms

  • Baroque
  • Standing
  • Flemish
  • group
  • figure
  • Reclining
Provenance

Julius S. Held

Inscription

across top verso in red chalk: Giulio Romano

NGA object ID 63034. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.