Folio from the Gozzoli Album: Two Standing Figures, One Clothed, the Other Nude, Two Monks

Author: Albert Elen

This is a folio from a hypothetical lost drawing book, a remnant of which is now part of an eighteenth-century album called the Gozzoli Album, held in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. For a general description, see here.

This page was originally folio 58 recto in the hypothetical lost volume (now a verso in the album). The finger smudges in the lower right corner confirm that this was originally a recto page.

The two drawings above represent the same standing figure in an identical pose, one nude and one in the clothes of a monk. The clothed version is similar to an autograph drawing by Gozzoli on a related sheet now in Rome, depicting a cardinal holding the hand of a bishop kneeling in front of him.^[1] Ames-Lewis (1998) has pointed out that the unclothed version was copied, with modifications, from an autograph drawing by Gozzoli, also in Rotterdam (MB 977). The copyist was, however, primarily interested in the articulation of the pose of the prototype, less in the head, facial features, hand and feet, which are therefore summarily rendered.

Berenson (1938 and 1961) is the only scholar who considered this drawing (and also folios 5 recto and 8 verso) to be autograph.