Lot Essay
This double-sided study of male nudes is a powerful demonstration of Francesco Salviati’s exceptional skills as a draftsman. With incisive line and curvilinear hatching, the artist drew on each side of the paper a vigorous figure, revealing the calligraphic virtuosity and elegant refinement characteristic of his style. Already as a child, Salviati ‘did nothing else but draw’, as noted by the sixteenth-century historian Vincenzo Borghini (quoted in McTavish, op. cit., p. 66). Arguably even more than his paintings, it is the rich corpus of his drawings, executed in a great variety of techniques, that attests to the artist’s abilities and virtuosity.
In the 17th Century, the drawing under discussion was part of the collection of the painter and avid collector of drawings Peter Lely; possibly even earlier is the old inscription attributing it to Michelangelo. Later, the drawing was given to the Venetian Battista Franco, and then to the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. In his youth, around 1526-1527, Salviati spent time in Bandinelli’s workshop, and his pen studies of the human figure betray this period of training with the older master, who himself executed many energetic studies of the male nude (see Monbeig Goguel, op. cit., p. 53). The limits between the graphic output of the two draftsmen has been the object of scholarly investigation for a long time, as Bandinelli’s technique and sculptural manner had a great impact on Salviati’s work as well as on that of his other pupils. Bandinelli had an almost obsessive fascination with Michelangelo’s David, and the study of the male nude was at the center of much of his practice. Similarly, Salviati throughout his career focused many of his efforts to the powerful rendering of the human body, always depicted in new and sophisticated postures. His work was grounded in observation from life, though: Giorgio Vasari recounts how Salviati and he studied nudes together from life in public bathhouses and made anatomical studies in the cemetery (McTavish in op. cit., Ottawa, 2005, p. 322).
Another double-sided sheet by Salviati, a recent acquisition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 2021.69), is closely related to the work under discussion (figs. 1, 2; see C. Monbeig Goguel in Francesco Salviati ou la Bella Maniera, exhib. cat., Rome, Villa Medici, and Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1998, no. 15, ill.). The two drawings are close to identical in scale, technique, and subject, so much so that they must have been produced at the same time. Because of the strong sculptural qualities of the nudes, the drawing at the Metropolitan Museum was attributed by John Pope-Hennessy to the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammanati (J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, London, 1963, I, p. 75).
The two male figures drawn on the recto and verso of the present sheet –one seen from the back and the other in profile, and both captured in dramatic and emphatic postures – cannot be related to any of the known painted compositions by Salviati. However, David McTavish pointed out that a figure in a posture quite close to the man seen from behind on the verso of the drawing offered here appears in the foreground of a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford representing the Death of the Children of Niobe (inv. WA 1863.674; see P. Costamagna in in Francesco Salviati ou la Bella Maniera, exhib. cat., op. cit., no. 74, ill.) and translated into print in 1541 probably by Girolamo Fagiuoli (fig. 3; see S. Boorsch, ‘Salviati and Prints. The Question of Fagiuoli’, in Francesco Salviati et La Bella Maniera. Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998), Rome, pp. 515-516).
Figs. 1, 2. Francesco Salviati, Seated nude youth, facing left (recto); Bearded nude male figure in a half-kneeling pose, holding drapery behind his back (verso). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 3. Girolamo Fagiuoli, after Francesco Salviati, The Death of the Children of Niobe. Engraving. The Art Institute of Chicago.
In the 17th Century, the drawing under discussion was part of the collection of the painter and avid collector of drawings Peter Lely; possibly even earlier is the old inscription attributing it to Michelangelo. Later, the drawing was given to the Venetian Battista Franco, and then to the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. In his youth, around 1526-1527, Salviati spent time in Bandinelli’s workshop, and his pen studies of the human figure betray this period of training with the older master, who himself executed many energetic studies of the male nude (see Monbeig Goguel, op. cit., p. 53). The limits between the graphic output of the two draftsmen has been the object of scholarly investigation for a long time, as Bandinelli’s technique and sculptural manner had a great impact on Salviati’s work as well as on that of his other pupils. Bandinelli had an almost obsessive fascination with Michelangelo’s David, and the study of the male nude was at the center of much of his practice. Similarly, Salviati throughout his career focused many of his efforts to the powerful rendering of the human body, always depicted in new and sophisticated postures. His work was grounded in observation from life, though: Giorgio Vasari recounts how Salviati and he studied nudes together from life in public bathhouses and made anatomical studies in the cemetery (McTavish in op. cit., Ottawa, 2005, p. 322).
Another double-sided sheet by Salviati, a recent acquisition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 2021.69), is closely related to the work under discussion (figs. 1, 2; see C. Monbeig Goguel in Francesco Salviati ou la Bella Maniera, exhib. cat., Rome, Villa Medici, and Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1998, no. 15, ill.). The two drawings are close to identical in scale, technique, and subject, so much so that they must have been produced at the same time. Because of the strong sculptural qualities of the nudes, the drawing at the Metropolitan Museum was attributed by John Pope-Hennessy to the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammanati (J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, London, 1963, I, p. 75).
The two male figures drawn on the recto and verso of the present sheet –one seen from the back and the other in profile, and both captured in dramatic and emphatic postures – cannot be related to any of the known painted compositions by Salviati. However, David McTavish pointed out that a figure in a posture quite close to the man seen from behind on the verso of the drawing offered here appears in the foreground of a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford representing the Death of the Children of Niobe (inv. WA 1863.674; see P. Costamagna in in Francesco Salviati ou la Bella Maniera, exhib. cat., op. cit., no. 74, ill.) and translated into print in 1541 probably by Girolamo Fagiuoli (fig. 3; see S. Boorsch, ‘Salviati and Prints. The Question of Fagiuoli’, in Francesco Salviati et La Bella Maniera. Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998), Rome, pp. 515-516).
Figs. 1, 2. Francesco Salviati, Seated nude youth, facing left (recto); Bearded nude male figure in a half-kneeling pose, holding drapery behind his back (verso). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 3. Girolamo Fagiuoli, after Francesco Salviati, The Death of the Children of Niobe. Engraving. The Art Institute of Chicago.