A copy after Michelangelo’s Tityus (RCIN 912771), one of the 'presentation drawings' made as gifts for Tommaso de' Cavalieri. The group of Tityus and the vulture are more isolated than in the original, without the tree trunk. 

Wilde (Popham and Wilde 1949, no. 459) accepted Gibson's ascription to Giulio Clovio; but Joannides (Michelangelo and his Influence, 1996, no. 14) noted that the tentative contour generally to be found in Clovio’s drawings is not seen, and the internal hatching is emphatic in a manner alien to Clovio’s more delicate and fastidious procedures; Joannides suggested instead a Florentine draughtsman of around 1550, such as Tommaso Manzuoli (1531-71).

On the verso are the pen inscriptions ‘Michel’ and 'Julio Clovio d MAngolo Buonarottj / 3.3'. The latter is in the form associated with the English dealer William Gibson (1644/5-1702?), whose inscriptions and characteristic 'price codes’ can be found on at least 51 drawings in the Royal Collection. Jonathan Richardson the Elder explained Gibson's pricing system whereby the second figure is the unit - 1 for a shilling, 2 for half a crown, 3 for a crown (5 shillings) and 4 for a pound (20 shillings); a price code of 3.3 would indicate that the drawing was priced at fifteen shillings. Like many other drawings with an English seventeenth-century provenance, the top corners of this sheet have been cropped, perhaps to be placed in a decorative mount. This cropping could be indicative of a particular collector or could represent a more general fashion adopted by English collectors at that time; some 14 of the 51 drawings in the Royal Collection with Gibson inscriptions have been cropped in this way, and a further 29 Italian Renaissance drawings without collectors' marks have been shaped in the same manner. It is likely that all these drawings were acquired for the Royal Collection in the seventeenth century, most probably during the reign of Charles II. Amother copy of Tityus at Christie's, 3 April 1986, lot 6, bore Nicolas Lanier's collector's mark.