Seated Man looking Right

Author: Gert Jan van der Sman

This drawing is one of a large group of sheets from the workshop of Filippino Lippi (c.1457-1504). It includes figure studies that are finely finished and others executed more roughly, particularly when it comes to the way white highlights were applied. The drawing discussed here comes into the second category and can be compared with a drawing in Berlin of a seated man, sunk in thought. That sheet is a variant of a more carefully drawn study in London.^[1]

There are various theories about the virtually literal repetition of certain poses and figures. Schulze Altcappenberg (1995) suggested that related studies like this were made in the artist’s workshop at the same time, that is to say when a clothed man was sitting as a model. During this drawing session different assistants would have worked side by side, each with their own hand. O’Malley (2020) was not convinced that the drawings in London and Berlin were made simultaneously.^[2] In her opinion they may even have been done as much as more than ten years apart. Assistants and pupils drew dal vivo (from life) in Filippino’s workshop all the time and had a habit of repeatedly practising the rendition of characteristic poses. A third possibility, not mentioned in the literature, is that on occasion Filippino’s assistants and garzoni (apprentices) also worked from one another’s drawings. Be this as it may, a great deal of uncertainty about the making of the figure studies and their precise dating remains.

The Rotterdam sheet illustrates the difficulty of cataloguing the practice material from Filippino’s workshop as one group. The drawing on the recto was probably done from life, but the image of the Madonna and Child on the verso looks more as though it was drawn from memory, in view among other things of the angular rendition of the lower folds of Mary’s cloak. Ragghianti (1960) saw a connection with the drawing Seated Madonna and a Madonna Worshipping the Christ Child, a sheet usually attributed to Jacopo del Sellaio (c.1441/1442-1493).^[3] However, no clear similarities can be discerned with the drawing technique and the depiction of the faces and hands.