A seated boy, a subsidiary study of drapery, and a faint study of a head, upper left

This drawing is a study of a garzone probably playing a viola da gamba. The squaring suggests it is a study for a picture. The handling of the drawing is influenced by Andrea del Sarto and Naldini's first master Jacopo Pontormo, whom with he studied between 1549 and 1557. Later Naldini participated in Vasari's studio, working in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Vasari, in his life of Pontormo, mentions Naldini as 'a young man of fine spirit, who took such care of Jacopo [Pontormo]'s life as Jacopo would allow him to take; and under his master's discipline he made no little proficiency in design, and became such, indeed, that a very happy result is looked for from him'. Similar chalk studies are in the Uffizi (A. Petrioli Tofani, Inventario, Disegni di figura, I, Florence, 1991, nos. 708F and 718F-720F and 17808F illustrated in A. Petrioli Tofani, Sixteenth-Century Tuscan Drawings from the Uffizi, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1988, no. 58 ) and in the Louvre, C. Monbeig-Goguel, Vasari et son Temps, Paris, 1972, nos. 93 and 98.