Folio from the Gozzoli Album: St John the Baptist, a Standing and a Reclining Male Nude

Author: Albert Elen

This is a folio from a hypothetical lost drawing book, a remnant of which is now part of an eighteenth-century album called the Gozzoli Album, held in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. For a general description, see here.

This page was originally folio 45 verso in the hypothetical lost volume (now also a verso in the album).

The figure drawings on four violet prepared pages (folio 9 verso, 10 recto, 11 verso, 12 recto) match a drawing of standing young man, rendered in frontal view with the pen and white heightening on a violet ground, now in Vienna (Albertina, inv. 12r), which is also listed by Degenhart/Schmitt (1968, no. 462) as a work from the Gozzoli workshop and originating from the hypothetical lost drawing book.

As Ger Luijten (Luijten/Meij 1990) has rightly pointed out, the reclining figure was probably ‘borrowed’ from the full figure on folio 11 verso, which was made by a more accomplished draughtsman, also judging from the well-rendered left foot. Another drawing deriving from the same model is found on a related sheet, also with a violet preparation, now in Rome).^[1]