Standing Nude Youth

Author: Rosie Razzall

This sheet with a nude study in red chalk on each side is an example of the workshop practice of drawing the human figure which flourished in Florence in the sixteenth century. The male figure holding a staff on the recto is an academy nude, drawn from a model posing in a life class. As there were no female models in these classes, the female figure on the verso in contrapposto is probably based on an antique sculpture. Her right arm is shown in two variant positions; the one with her hand held close to her groin is reminiscent of the Venus pudica, a much-repeated antique type.

The drawing is probably by a Florentine Mannerist artist but does not yet have a convincing attribution. Two separate, earlier inscriptions on the sheet suggested Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572), who worked in Florence in the middle of the sixteenth century. This proposition was taken up by art historian Bernard Berenson,^[1] but other scholars have since considered other names to be much more likely. Of these suggestions, Andrea Boscoli (1550/1560-1606/1608),^[2] Matteo Rosselli (1578-1650),^[3] and Lodovico Cardi, called Cigoli (1559-1613)^[4] have gained the most traction. A fruitful point of comparison is a life study by Boscoli in Amsterdam,^[5] which demonstrates some similarity in the soft passages of shading, but with differences in the treatment of the facial features of the figure, which are more filled out on the Rotterdam sheet. The figure on the verso of the Rotterdam drawing is drawn with rapid, looser hatching and doubled outlines. This study may be by a different hand, indicating that the sheet of paper was passed between members of the same workshop.