This drawing depicts the sorceress Circe surrounded by the companions of Odysseus whom she has turned into animals, and whose clothes and armour lie empty on the steps before her. It is even more exuberant than Castiglione’s print of the same subject executed a few years earlier (RCIN 830464). Circe’s melancholy in that etching has been replaced here by a light air of triumph, and there is a certain humour in the artist’s treatment of the animals – including such unheroic beasts as chickens, monkeys, a rabbit and a tortoise. Castiglione also treated the theme several times in the 1650s, in paintings and drawings. Though the present sheet does not bear a direct relationship to any of these, it is close in conception to two paintings, one in Palazzo Spinola, Genoa (perhaps the Circe that was among the paintings noted in the account book of Ansaldo Pallavicino in April 1652), and another dated 1653 in the collection of the Order of Malta. It is possible that many of Castiglione’s drawings were acquired after his death by Carlo II Gonzaga. In 1707 Carlo’s son Ferdinando Carlo was forced to accept Austrian rule in Mantua and moved to Venice, where he sold off much of the family collection before his death in 1708, and this may have been the means by which Castiglione became so well known and admired in Venice in the eighteenth century. His drawings were to be found in the collections of Zaccaria Sagredo, Francesco Algarotti and Anton Maria Zanetti, and his compositional and figure types suffuse the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Joseph Smith bought most of his Castigliones from the heirs of Sagredo at some point between 1743 and 1755 (and was given others by Algarotti); they were listed in Smith’s will of 1761 as ‘four Volumes containing original drawings by Gio. Benedetto Castiglione great part whereof are the most capital of his Performance, these likewise belong’d to the said Nobleman Sagredo’. In 1762 the 260 drawings, oil sketches and monotypes were acquired by George III with the rest of Smith’s collection. Catalogue entry adapted from The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London, 2007