- Museum number
- 1866,1208.641-642
- Description
-
Bandinelli album: A standing male nude. Pen and brown ink
Verso: A male nude seen from the front and rear. Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1525-1550 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 237 millimetres
-
Width: 152 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The Bandinelli album
The album would appear to date from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries and put together in Holland or Flanders judging from the title in Dutch, `ONTLEED KUNDIGE / TEKENINGEN / DOOR / BACCIO BANDINELLI.` (`Anatomical drawings by Baccio Baldinelli`). It has nineteen pages and is bound in vellum with the title and boarder lines tooled in gold. The boards are considerably warped. The frontispiece is a portrait engraving of Bandinelli (1860,1208.640). The last page is blank.
The album contains seventeen inlaid drawings. They probably date to the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The present sheet is by a different hand than the homogeneous group of fourteen sheets that follow (1866,1208.643 to 667). The last two drawings (1860,1208.668/669) are by different hands and do not match stylistically other studies in the album. The last sheet is the only drawing attributed to Baldinelli in recent literature (Monbeig Goguel [2001], Joannides [2003]).
A summary of the album is thus:
19 unnumbered pages containing drawings, all inlaid, by at least three separate artists:
Page 1 = pasted portrait engraving of Baldinelli (1860,1208.640)
Page 2 = Recto: male nude (1860,1208.641); verso: male nude (1860,1208.642)
Pages 3 to 16 = fourteen inlaid sheets of anatomical drawings by a single artist (1860,1208.643 to 667).
Page 17 = inlaid sheet, lined with paper, with an anatomical study (1860,1208.668)
Page 18 = inlaid sheet of a male nude (1860,1208.669)
Page 19 = blank
N.B all drawn versos except one (1860,1208.657) have separate registration numbers. For a discussion of the group of drawings making up pages 3 to 16 see 1860,1208.643/4.
Lit.: A.E. Popham and J. Wilde, `The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle`, London, 1949, under no. 84 (= `School of Bandinelli`, écorché studies); C. Monbeig Goguel in exhib. cat., Rome, Villa Medici and Paris, Louvre, `Francesco Salviati o la Bella Maniera`, 1998, p. 40, fig. 11, and under no. 14, p. 107; C. Monbeig Goguel, `Francesco Salviati e la Bella Maniera`, in C. Monbeig Goguel, P. Costamagna and M. Hochmann (eds), `Francesco Salviati e la Bella Maniera, Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998)`, Rome, 2001, pp. 55 and 61, figs 16 and 17 (1868,1208.641 and 658); P. Joannides, `Michel-ange, élèves et copistes`, Paris, 2003, under no. R16, p. 394; N. Hegener, `Divi Iacobi Eqves. Selbstdarstellung im Werk des Florentiner Bildhauers Baccio Bandinelli`, Munich and Berlin, 2008, pp. 447-8, 632.
Recto
The figure is drawn in long, swift strokes of the pen, the initial lines those lightest drawn, including the inverted triangle delineating the chest and the line indicating the figure`s vertical axis. The outline of the head has been increased, the uppermost portion of which has been lost through the trimming of the sheet.
Verso
The nude is divided vertically into a back and front half, creating a disconcerting grafting of shoulder and breast, buttock and genitals. The left half was drawn first. The head and arm to the right have been curtailed. The trimming of the left and bottom edges has shifted the figure to the left of the sheet and cut three limbs - although it might be surmised they were left off in a similar manner to the head and arm to the right. It would appear executed by the same hand as the recto (note the shared method of indicating the knee cap with a circle).
Catherine Monbeig Goguel (2001), followed by Joannides (2003), attributes this sheet to Francesco Salviati, the recto demonstrating the young Salviati`s response to Bandinelli and his fascination for Michelangelo`s David.
Lit.: C. Monbeig Goguel, `Francesco Salviati e la Bella Maniera`, in C. Monbeig Goguel, P. Costamagna and M. Hochmann (eds), `Francesco Salviati e la Bella Maniera, Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998)`, Rome, 2001, pp. 55, fig. 16 (Francesco Salviati); P. Joannides, `Michel-ange, élèves et copistes`, Paris, 2003, under no. R16, p. 394.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1997 Oct-Nov, London, Royal College of Art, 'The Quick and the Dead'
1998 Jan-Mar, Warwick, Mead Gallery, 'The Quick and the Dead'
1998 Mar-May, Leeds, City Art Gallery, 'The Quick and the Dead'
1998 Jun-Sep, Geneva, Musee d'Art et d'Histoire, 'The Quick and the Dead'
- Acquisition date
- 1866
- Acquisition notes
- The title on the album cover indicates a Dutch or Flemish provenance
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1866,1208.641-642
