Seated Sibyl and Attendant Genius (recto); Study of the Head of a Horse in Profile (verso). Artist: Pirro Ligorio (Italian, Naples ca. 1512/13-1583 Ferrara). Dimensions: 9 5/8 x 10 7/16in. (24.5 x 26.5cm). Date: ca. 1540.This monumental Sibyl was inspired by the figural types of the "Ancestors of Christ" frescoed by Michelangelo on the Sistine ceiling from 1508 to 1512. The bold but finished manner of drawing with red chalk recalls Raphael's studies of about 1515-20, at the height of his Roman period. Painter, architect, and learned antiquarian, the Neapolitan Pirro Ligorio was active mainly in Rome and Ferrara. With her large hands and thick wrists, the Metropolitan Museum Sibyl probably dates from the 1540s, thus fairly early in Ligorio's years in Rome.An attribution to Sebastiano del Piombo had been proposed by Philip Pouncey when this drawing was in the Squire collection in London, and the drawing was published and exhibited with this attribution after it came to the Metropolitan