Study of a Standing Male Nude Holding on to a Tree

Author: Albert Elen

The first reference to our drawing was in the Elenco (inventory) of the D’Adda album (1926),^[1] where it was listed as a 'Studio per un Adamo (?)' among the drawings by Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594). Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944), however, considered it a workshop drawing.

The drawing is probably related to the figure of St John the Baptist in a painting of the baptism of Christ. Tintoretto made several paintings of this subject, all of them with John the Baptist standing on the right in the composition and with roughly the same posture, the right arm reaching out to the left, pouring water on Christ’s head from a bowl in his hand. The one closest to our drawing is the altarpiece in the church of San Silvestro in Venice, painted around 1580, but the position of the legs and arms differs, as does the turn of the torso.^[2] Moreover, in our study the upright staff which John the Baptist holds looks more like a branch of a forked tree. This detail was mistaken for a ladder by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944) and also Rearick (2001), who links our drawing to Tintoretto’s painting The Crucifixion in the church of San Cassiano in Venice (1568), where he descends a ladder placed diagonally against the cross.^[3] However, the figure in our drawing seems to rest his lifted right leg on a stone. The object in our figure’s hand is also subject to misinterpretation. Rightly rejecting Rearick’s proposal, Rossi (2011) connects our drawing to the painting The Fall of Man in Baltimore, in which a sensuous Eve, clinging to a tree, hands the apple to Adam seated below left.^[4] Although the painting is not by that artist, Rossi considers the drawing to be a work by the young Palma Giovane (c.1548-1628), still under the influence of Tintoretto, stylistically close to another drawing now firmly attributed to Palma, also in Rotterdam (I 84). Marciari rather thinks of Domenico Tintoretto around 1590 in view of the quivering outlines of the torso, the stripy shading, and the open-eyed face.^[5] We tend to follow Marciari’s opinion and tentatively attribute the drawing to Domenico, as a figure study as yet unconnected to a specific painting.