Menelaus Holding the Body of Patroclus

Giulio Romano · n.d.

Medium

Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, on tan laid paper, laid down on card

Original size

35.8 × 55.5 cm (14 1/8 × 21 7/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

Few drawings from the Renaissance capture raw grief and battlefield chaos with the intensity of this large-scale composition, where Menelaus strains to bear the weight of his fallen comrade away from the carnage at Troy. Giulio Romano trained under Raphael and inherited his master's command of the human figure, but pushed it toward something more turbulent and emotionally charged — a tendency that defines the Mannerist spirit. The drawing technique here is virtuosic: bold pen strokes establish the figures, brown wash carves out shadow and volume, and white gouache lifts the highlights to give the scene a sculptural, almost relief-like quality. The result reads less like a sketch and more like a complete visual argument about the weight of loss. Romano's reputation spread far enough that Shakespeare name-checks him in The Winter's Tale — one of the only contemporary artists to receive that distinction — which speaks to how widely his work was known and admired beyond Italy. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Romano's layered mark-making into the richer tonal range of oil on canvas, preserving the tension of every contour and the dramatic interplay of light and shadow that makes the original so arresting, while giving it the permanence and presence to hold a wall.