A pen and ink drawing of a Pope and a Cardinal in conversation in a library. Inscribed at bottom right: ‘Zuccari’.

This drawing corresponds with one of five scenes painted on the wall of a room adjoining the Sixtine Library in the Camera di Sta. Francesca Romana. The room is dated 1610 on the vaulting with the inscription: ‘Paulus P.P.V. magna librorum copiam typis descriptorum bibliothecae Vaticanae adiicit: Scipionem Cardinalem Burghesium ex sorore nepotem, Sedi Apostolicae Bibliothecarium creat’. According to Monsignore Stanislao le Grelle, Giovanni Battista Ricci was responsible for the decoration of the Sale Paoline of the Biblioteca under the direction of Monsignore Baldassarre Ansidei, Prefetto della Biblioteca. This statement may or may not be based on documentary evidence, but the style of the drawing, though by no means conclusively in favour of Ricci’s authorship, is at any rate not dissimilar.

The fresco has also been connected to a painting of Sixtus X approving a design of the new library submitted to him by Pietro Fontana, which is documented as a work of Pietro Facchetti (c. 1535-1619) about 1590.

A drawing in the Albertina (Albertina Catalogue III, 364), representing the Emperor Zeno honouring the Library of Costantinople, traditionally attributed to Cesare Nebbia, has also been related to Ricci. Other two drawings from the same series are respectively in the Collection of Prof. van Regteren and in Copenhagen.