The back of a nude and two studies of a raised right arm and shoulder seen from the front (recto); A nude seen from behind looking to the left, and other studies of his left shoulder and right leg (verso)

The recto possibly relates to the frescoes Perino executed for Andrea Doria in the Loggia degli Eroi in his palace in Genoa, E. Parma Armani, Perin del Vaga, L'anello mancante, Genoa, 1986, pp. 73-152. Perino moved to Genoa after the Sack of Rome in 1527 and decorated many rooms of the palace. The Loggia shows a frieze of life-size seated figures in various postures. In some of them the position of the arm corresponds quite closely to that in the present drawing, E. Parma Armani, op. cit., figs. 116 and 118.
The figure seen from behind may relate to one of the draped figures transporting the trophies in the ceiling frescoes of the Atrium, E. Parma Armani, op. cit., fig. 91. The motive of the raised arm was used by Perino a number of times before he left Rome: in the Salone of the Palazzo Melchiorre Baldassini in Rome (E. Parma Armani, op. cit., figs. 20-6) and in two of the Evangelists in the chapel of the Crucifix in San Marcello al Corso, Rome, E. Parma Armani, op. cit., fig. 66.
Two further drawings of arms are connected to the Doria decoration, one, along with horses heads, is in the Tobey collection, New York (exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Genoa, Drawings and Prints, 1996, no. 111) and another with multiple sketches is in the Linz Museum, H. Widauer, Italienishe Zeichnungen des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts, exhib. cat., Linz, 1997, no. 1. A drawing similar in handling is in the British Museum, London, P. Pouncey and J.A. Gere, Raphael and his Circle, London, 1962, no. 176, pls. 146-7.