Half Figure of a Standing Man

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

This previously unpublished drawing depicts the torso of a man dressed in a close-fitting shirt and a flowing cloak. He turns his face to the right and stretches his right arm out in the same direction. His head and hand are more roughly worked out than his cloak, which is drawn with firmer lines and more white heightening. The man’s stately bearing and elaborately decorated cloak would seem to suggest that it is a portrait of someone who occupied an important position.

Franz Koenigs acquired the sheet in 1929 as a drawing by Titian (1488/1490-1576). This Venetian artist is known above all for his portrait paintings of rulers, nobles and popes, whom he often depicted half-length, as in our drawing. However, he was certainly not the only artist who made such portraits, and our drawing is also reminiscent of paintings and drawings by, among others, Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510-1592) and his sons, Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) or Pasquale Ottino (1578-1630).^[1] All these artists have in common the fact that they worked in the Veneto and, as in our sheet, often drew with black chalk and white heightening on blue paper. Comparisons with Titian’s drawings in Florence^[2] and London^[3] clearly show that it is in any event not by him. The figures and draperies in those works are much looser and more dynamic, and the lines are much thicker. Since no specific artist can be indicated on the basis of the pose of the pictured figure and the technique used, the attribution of the sheet has been changed to anonymous Venetian. We assume a date in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.^[4]