A drawing of a man in armour. The figure corresponds (excepting the head) with Perugino's St Michael in the National Gallery, London, a panel from an altarpiece commissioned around 1496 for the Certosa of Pavia. With more fanciful armour he is also found as Lucius Sicinius among Perugino's frescoes of Antique heroes in the Cambio, Perugia, painted around 1498, and as St Michael (again) in the artist's Assumption with Saints, dated 1500, in the Accademia, Florence.

The head is more severe and individualised than that of the St Michael as painted, and it is probable that the drawing was not made directly as a study for the Pavia altarpiece. The armour worn by the figure is contemporary and probably north Italian in origin. It is functional, not merely for show, and as a full suit it would have been worn by one of high rank; almost identical armour is seen on the statue of Francesco Sforza in the Museo Civico, Vicenza. Such a suit is unlikely to have been one of Perugino's studio props, and he must have made special arrangements to pose a model dressed in this armour. The sheet would then serve as a workshop model for future and repeated reference, and was pressed into service when Perugino received the commission for the Pavia altarpiece. The pose is based on that of Donatello's marble St George (Bargello, Florence), but it is not a copy after that sculpture: the armour is here more detailed, the legs are planted further apart, and the arms and shoulders pulled further forwards.

The drawing (or a replica) was copied by a studio hand in a sheet in the Wessenberg Gemäldegalerie in Konstanz (inv. 37/108), alongside a youth in armour who is also reproduced in RCIN 990696, and it is thus likely that the present drawing and 990696 were drawn as a pair. The latest date of 1493 for the prototype of 990696 would then also apply to 912801.

Inscribed lower right in pencil: Massaccio.

Text adapted from M. Clayton, Raphael and his Circle, 1999, no. 5.