Folio from the Gozzoli Album: Reclining and a Seated male Nude, Head of a Woman Facing Left

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 46 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 figure drawings on four violet prepared pages (folio 9 verso, 10 recto, 11 verso, 12 recto) technically match a drawing of standing young man, rendered in frontal view with the pen and with white heightening on a purple ground, now in Vienna (Albertina, inv. 12 recto), which is also listed by Degenhart/Schmitt (1968, no. 462) as a work from the Gozzoli workshop and originating from the hypothetical lost drawing book.

As Ger Luijten (Luijten/Meij 1990) has rightly pointed out, the seated figure does not show much understanding of anatomy, and the similar figure on the opposite album page (folio 12 recto) even less. They were probably executed by different hands and copying an earlier drawing in the workshop stock, now lost.