Study of a Reclining Male Nude with Outstretched Arm for 'St George and the Dragon' (recto), tracing in back view (verso)

Author: Albert Elen

Accepted by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944) and Rossi (1975, 2007) as an authentic work by Jacopo Tintoretto, the recto drawing of this double-sided sheet has otherwise not been published or exhibited. It has long been considered a study of a man hanging, probably intended for a Crucifixion, judging from the position of Reynolds’ collector’s mark. Rossi (1975) compares our drawing to the recumbent male nude victim in the centre of Tintoretto’s Saint George and the Dragon (c.1553) (fig.), now in London,^[1] but dismisses a functional connection because, based primarily on Tietze/Tietze-Conrat’s opinion, she considers it to be stylistically much later, and also because a very similar drawing of the same figure, now in Paris, is considered to be contemporary to the painting and thus chronologically consistent.^[2]

In our opinion, both drawings are closely related to the painting as subsequent preliminary stages for this individual figure, the Rotterdam study, stylistically dated around 1553 by Marciari,^[3] preceding the worked-out second version in Paris, which is executed with added highlights on blue paper. Both are similarly squared, slightly diagonally, the Rotterdam drawing for transfer to the Paris sheet and the latter for transfer to the canvas, or to yet another intermediate stage, now lost. The position of the left leg was slightly changed in the second drawing, bringing the left knee up, and the head down towards the left shoulder, and thus adapted in the painting. Moreover, the right arm was sketched as an afterthought, as it is added to the shoulder in black chalk only, extending from under the body to the front, the fingers visible at the left hip. In the end, only the addition of the upper right arm was incorporated in the painted figure, judging from an Infrared-reflectograph image showing the underdrawing on the canvas, but painted over with a blue cloth.^[4] The two consecutive preparatory drawings allow us a fascinating insight into the creative process that resulted in one of Tintoretto’s most famous paintings.

Both drawings, which were kept in the workshop repertory of motifs, may have served a second purpose when Jacopo was preparing his last painting, The Entombment of Christ (1594) in the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.^[5] The drawings only needed to be turned to the left in order to be used for the dead Christ being carried to his grave.

On the reverse of our sheet is a tracing of the recto drawing in back view.