Marcus Curtius Leaping into the Abyss on His Horse
by BRAMER, Leonaert, Brush and gray and black ink, gray washes, 400 x 300 mm
This comparatively large drawing is part of a series of fifty illustrating Livy’s epic history of Rome, “Ab urbe condita”. The series has been preserved intact along with a table of contents compiled by Bramer himself.
Marcus Curtius was appreciated in the seventeenth century as the very model of a hero who dies for his fatherland. To fulfil an oracle’s prediction and save the Roman republic he leapt on horseback into a flaming chasm.