- Museum number
- 1860,0616.64
- Description
-
A nude man moving to left with arms outstretched
Metalpoint, heightened with white, on mauve-grey prepared paper, top corners cut
- Production date
- 1472-1504 (circa ?)
- Dimensions
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Height: 237 millimetres
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Width: 177 millimetres (upper corners cut)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Catalogued in the 1860 Woodburn sale in accordance with the inscription as Masaccio, and later given to Verrocchio. The correct attribution to Lippi, subsequently never doubted, is first found in the 1895 'Guide'. It does not appear to relate to a specific painting, and instead scholars have tended to see it as a study or adoption of another artist's motif. The source of this inspiration has been disputed, however: for Shoemaker (1994) the closest similarities are found in the nude studies by Antonio Pollaiuolo of an earlier date, while Zambrano and Katz Nelson imagine something more contemporary, linking it with a figure in Bertoldo's celebrated 'Battle' relief from Lorenzo the Magnificent's rooms, now in the Bargello, dating from around 1479. They further suggest that the figure was (probably quite promptly) reused by Lippi for the executioners in the 'Crucifixion of Peter' in the Brancacci Chapel - a suggestion that would imply a marginally earlier date than is the norm for the sheet, which is usually placed in the mid-to-late 1480s.
Goldner points out that Filippino explored the same pose in a sheet from Vasari's Libro, now at Christ Church, Oxford (JBS 33). He also notes that the model appears to be the same as in another drawing in this collection, 1858,0724.4 (Popham and Pouncey no. 134).
Lit.: S. Colvin, in exhib. cat., BM, 'Guide to an Exhibition of Drawings and Engravings by the Old Masters, principally from the Malcolm Collection', London, 1895, no. 23; A. Scharf, 'Filippino Lippi', Vienna, 1935, pp. 83, 130, no. 312, fig. 179; B. Berenson, 'The Drawings of the Florentine Painters', Chicago, 1938, II, no. 1346; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 135, II, pl. CXXIII; I.H. Shoemaker, 'Filippino Lippi as a Draughtsman', Michigan, 1993 (U.M.I. facsimile of 1975 Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York), no. 111, pp. 366-7; I.H. Shoemaker, 'Some Observations on the Development of Filippino Lippi's Figure Drawings', in E. Cropper (ed.), 'Florentine Drawings at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, papers from a colloquium held at the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1992', Bologna, 1994, pp. 261-2, fig. 14; G.R. Goldner, in exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle', 1997, no. 37, pp. 181-1 (with further literature); P. Zambrano and J. Katz Nelson, 'Filippino Lippi', Milan, 2004, pp. 222 and 297, n. 148; C. Van Cleave, 'Master Drawings of the Italian Renaissance', London, 2007, p. 98, illustrated p. 99.
Popham & Pouncey 1950
Catalogued in the Woodburn Sale, in accordance with the inscription, under the name of Masaccio, this drawing was later ascribed to Verrocchio. The correct attribution to Filippino is first found in the 'Guide' of 1895. As Scharf observes, this study is probably a late work.
Literature: BB 1346; B.M. Guide, 1895, no. 23; A. Scharf, op. cit., p. 83, cat. no. 312, fig. 179.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1997/8 Oct-Jan, New York, Met.Mus. of Art, 'Filippino Lippi'
2016-17, Oct-Jan, Suzhou, 'Italian Renaissance Drawings', no. 11
2019 11 Apr-30 Jun, Macau Museum of Art, Macau, 'Italian Renaissance Drawings'
2021-2022 3 Sept – 20 Feb, Beijing, MWOODS, Italian Renaissance Drawings
- Previous owner
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Previous owner/ex-collection: Anonymous (T. Philipe, 24.iv.1801/114 as Masaccio 'A naked youth, running, by MASACCIO, (1430,0, silver point, on a prepared ground, heightened - very fine' bt ? £3-11-0)
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Previous owner/ex-collection: William Young Ottley (T. Philipe, 13.vi.1814/797 as Masaccio 'a naked man running - metal point, on violet ground, pencil - heightened - very fine')
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Previous owner/ex-collection: Sir Thomas Lawrence (L.2445)
- Acquisition date
- 1860
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1860,0616.64