Study of a Standing Man

Author: Sarah Vowles

This double-sided drawing has long been associated with the school of Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), due to its fluid use of black and white chalks on blue paper. When it first entered the Rotterdam collection, it was attributed to Parrasio Micheli (before 1516-1578), until Bernard Aikema and Bert Meijer tentatively suggested an attribution to Veronese himself in 1985.^[1] The technique is certainly redolent of Veronese, but neither the recto nor the verso display his vigour and mastery, and in this present author’s opinion it is far more likely that they are studies from Veronese’s studio. Indeed, the drawings on recto and verso seem so different in style that they may even be by two different hands, a contrast perhaps exacerbated by abrasion to the drawing on the verso, which has resulted in a softer, smokier appearance.

The verso, showing a nude man holding an apple and girded with leaves, is historically more interesting than the recto, as it is an early copy of Adam, a statue by Antonio Rizzo (c.1430-c.1499) generally dated to around 1480, which formed part of the sculptural decoration of the Foscari Arch in the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace. It testifies to the interest shown by sixteenth-century artists not only in antique Roman sculpture but also in the pioneering freestanding sculpture of their Renaissance forebears.^[2] The artist of this drawing has sought to imbue the figure with a sense of imminent movement and gives Adam a slightly stockier physique than in Rizzo’s prototype, with the lift of the chin slightly less pronounced in the drawing than in the sculpture. It should be remembered that the high placement of the sculpture on the arch would have made it difficult to copy and this drawing was perhaps drawn from memory after focused study, rather than being a direct copy on the spot.

The recto, with its harder, darting lines, shows the costume of a Venetian nobleman and was probably made as a study for, or copied from, one of the numerous family senatorial portraits produced in this period. Few studies for such portraits survive, as head studies would have had limited use as future studio models, but this drawing testifies to the way that studies of costume were often preserved and reproduced as part of the intellectual property of the workshop. The correct representation of dress was a vital aspect of Renaissance portraiture, as the introduction of sumptuary laws - especially in Venice - meant that contemporaries were acutely sensitive to styles, fabrics and colours as signifiers of social status. A costume for a portrait might be borrowed and displayed in the artist’s studio on a wooden lay figure, so that careful studies could be made without requiring long and tedious sittings with the portrait subject. A study of a nobleman’s costume such as this could then easily be reused in future portraits, reworked with a different head, and the addition of attributes such as ermine trims or stoles of office.