Study of a Seated Male Nude

Author: Albert Elen

The two studies on this double-sided sheet are listed in the Elenco (inventory) of the D’Adda album (1926) as by Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) and described as ‘Due studii, l'uno per un nudo seduto, l'altro per un uomo vestito in piedi (doppio)’.^[1] Jacopo’s authorship was rejected by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944), who also ruled out the possibility of a workshop drawing, but without presenting an alternative attribution.^[2] Bert Meijer (1985)^[3] was the first to link it to a large allegorical painting by Palma Giovane, now in a private collection.^[4] This painting shows a seated Apollo in the centre, surrounded by personifications of the four seasons and several other figures. Two related compositional drawings in pen and wash are held in Paris^[5] and Vaduz.^[6] Subsequently, separate studies were made for the main figures, only two of which survive.^[7]

The Rotterdam study is preparatory to the man seated at lower left and was probably done after a nude life model in the artist’s workshop. In the painting, the man is clothed and represents winter. The drawing shows a pentimento with a variant position of the model’s left arm, which Palma more or less kept in the second compositional drawing as well as in the painting, though moving the right hand from the knee to the upper thigh. The study is also close to another drawing by Palma, dated 1603, now in an unknown collection.^[8] In this remarkable drawing of St Jerome seated on a rock, executed in brush and oil paint over black chalk, heightened with white, the pose of the left arm and hand, holding a small crucifix, is like in our study. As the painting is dated around 1590-95, it seems that the artist reused the study some ten years later for the other drawing.

The reverse of our sheet bears a study of a standing young man, fully clothed, seen from his left side and turning to the viewer, with his left arm reaching out. Until now it has not been noticed that it is preparatory for the man in armour kneeling at lower right in the altarpiece The Crucifixion with Saints Peter, Elpidio and Anthony Abbot, which was painted by Palma Giovane in 1589-90 for the Collegiata di Sant’Elpidio a Mare near Fermo, where it is still in situ.^[9] Our drawing was quickly sketched after a clothed life model. Executed with curving lines of black chalk, the head summarily indicated, it is the prima idea for the figure of the patron saint Elpidio, which was worked out in a more detailed drawing now in Vienna.^[10] In that drawing and in the painting, the figure is not in visual contact with the viewer but looking up to the crucified Christ, his head rendered in profile, his right arm held to his breast and his left arm stretched out in awe.