Author: Carlo Arienti, (Arcore, July 21, 1801 – Bologna, March 21, 1873). Mythological scene: Ulysses disguised as a beggar surprises the Suitors. Oil painting on canvas, 32 x 42 cm, with frame 43 x 53 cm. Attributed to Carlo Arienti (Arcore 1801-Bologna 1873). The painting exhibits sustained quality and a rapid but defined execution, aspects that, together with the size of the support, suggest that we are in the presence of a sketch. The style immediately evokes the hand of a neoclassical artist recognizable in Carlo Arienti. In Milan, he enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he attended the courses of the neoclassical Luigi Sabatelli and the sculptor Camillo Pacetti and provided for the sustenance of the family by producing drawings and engravings for individuals; in 1823 he debuted at the Exhibition with Themistocles asking for hospitality and the following year presented Orestes revealing himself to his sister Electra. The artist was a student of Domenico Corvi and immediately cultivated the study of the classics of the Renaissance and Baroque period without neglecting examples from antiquity. In fact, there are numerous drawings depicting episodes of Roman history, and with his art the painter established himself on the national artistic scene as early as the early nineteenth century, so much so that he was named Prince of the Academy of San Luca in 1806. Equally conspicuous is the catalog of sketches created as an intermediate phase between the drawing and the final painting, a usual creative modality expressed here with the usual severity of layout and accurate narration. Returning to the work under examination, it was created as a study for the large, now dispersed painting depicting Horatius Cocles, commissioned to the painter around 1810 by Manuel Godoy, Prince of the Peace, advisor to King Charles IV and protected by Queen Maria Luisa, who had come to Rome in the wake of the Spanish sovereign after he had been deposed from the throne. We also know the drawing of this work (fig. 1), which was originally bound in a volume of the Camuccini collection mostly kept at the palace of Cantalupo in Sabina together with numerous other albums of the artist (pencil and stump on squared ivory cardboard in pencil, mm 545X800, De Angelis, 1978, p. 52.). The sources mention in the artist's inventories a sketch of invention and a replica as a sketch. Reference bibliography: U. Thieme, F. Becker, 'Künstlerlexikon', V, pp. 482C. Falconieri, 'Vita di Vincenzo Camuccini e pochi studi sulla pittura contemporanea', Rome 1875, ad vocem