Study of a Male Nude Bending Forward, to the Right, and a Seated Figure

Author: Albert Elen

This double-sided sheet bears two studies of a male nude made in two different poses, seen from slightly different angles, bending over the edge of a balustrade, an open coffin or a well, his left arm lowered behind it as if reaching down to something, the head looking down in the same direction, the right arm supporting the body. The figure looks like an assistant modelling for a life-drawing session. The draughtsman must have sat on the ground, as the model is viewed from below, so as to be able to view his face from under his right armpit. The study on the reverse was drawn first, with the figure standing firm on both legs. This pose was changed in the recto drawing by lifting the lower right leg in order to counterweight the torso bending over, making it more realistic. This variant was chosen and the drawing was squared for transfer. Next to this study on the recto is a second drawing, a small indistinct sketch of a seated figure drawing on a lap board, represented in two varying poses, leaning backward and forward.^[1]

Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944) consider the two studies to be Jacopo’s work, possibly related to his oval painting The Purification of the Midianite Virgins, which they regard as a late work, now in Madrid.^[2] The figure corresponds, in reverse, with the woman washing at a tub in the middle background, whose legs are entirely covered by her dress. Rossi (1975) does not consider this connection plausible because she thinks the drawing is stylistically closer to Domenico (1560-1635), who was not even born at the time to which she dates the painting (c.1555). Rearick (2001) and Marciari (2018), neither of whom contest the attribution to Jacopo himself, link our sheet to the person at lower left in the late ceiling painting The Triumph of Doge Niccolò da Ponte in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice (1579-82).^[3] However, unlike the first, this connection is not at all convincing. Although the figure is represented in the same direction as our two studies, the pose is different: he is ascending the steps of a staircase, bending over under the weight of a large casket on his left shoulder. Moreover, the pose of the legs does not match, and his right arm is invisible. Tietze/Tietze-Conrat’s attribution to Jacopo and the proposed functional relation with the painting in Madrid is therefore endorsed herewith.