.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In 1981, this arresting canvas was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in a show devoted to 18th-century oil sketches in New York collections. Organized by Jacob Bean, the exhibition brought together examples by artists including Solimena, Pittoni, Piazzetta, and De Mura as well as Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo. The present canvas, then attributed to Ubaldo's brother Gaetano Gandolfi, hung alongside another oil sketch of the same dimensions from the collection of Joseph F. McCrindle, also given to Gaetano. In the brief catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Bean wrote: “These two sketches were acquired by their present owners from a group of six similar studies. Presumably painted at the same time, they represent different poses by the same male model. Although there are landscape backgrounds behind the model, the pictures were painted in a studio as academic exercises. [Gaetano] Gandolfi was trained as a painter in the Accademia Clementina, Bologna, by the sculptor-anatomist Ercole Lelli, and it is likely that these studies were painted under his direction.” (Bean, op. cit.). As Bean suggests, the series of six sketches, all of equal dimensions and presumably cut from a single bolt of canvas, were certainly painted in the Gandolfi atelier in close succession.
The McCrindle Gaetano, which shows a standing male nude seen from behind, is now in the collection of the University of Michigan Art Museum, where it was accessioned in 2008 along with a third sketch from the same series from the McCrindle collection, also of equal dimensions, attributed to Ubaldo. The present work shares with this latter picture its distinctive background foliage, with wispy branches and leaves painted in quick, assured strokes, an unusual feature – as Bean points out – in similar academic sketches of the period. The treatment of the fleshtones in the present work is also comparable to that in the Michigan Ubaldo, as can be seen in the elbows, painted with a lifelike ruddiness, and the smooth, porcelain-like musculature of the figures. The “pale, pastel” palette of the present work, which Bean noted in his catalogue (loc. cit.), is also evident in the Michigan Ubaldo, further supporting the attribution of the present work not to Gaetano but to his brother Ubaldo, who also trained with Ercole Lelli and was likely working alongside his brother when the present work was made.
Studies, or “sketches”, of this type were popular in 18th-century painting academies, where students progressed from copying drawings, engravings and casts after antique sculptures, to drawing nude models from life. The male figure, regarded as the foundation of painting and sculpture, is the invariable subject of these studies, which were often transformed into more complex compositions for historical or allegorical pictures.
We are grateful to Dott.ssa Donatella Biagi Maino for endorsing the attribution to Ubaldo Gandolfi on the basis of photographs.
The McCrindle Gaetano, which shows a standing male nude seen from behind, is now in the collection of the University of Michigan Art Museum, where it was accessioned in 2008 along with a third sketch from the same series from the McCrindle collection, also of equal dimensions, attributed to Ubaldo. The present work shares with this latter picture its distinctive background foliage, with wispy branches and leaves painted in quick, assured strokes, an unusual feature – as Bean points out – in similar academic sketches of the period. The treatment of the fleshtones in the present work is also comparable to that in the Michigan Ubaldo, as can be seen in the elbows, painted with a lifelike ruddiness, and the smooth, porcelain-like musculature of the figures. The “pale, pastel” palette of the present work, which Bean noted in his catalogue (loc. cit.), is also evident in the Michigan Ubaldo, further supporting the attribution of the present work not to Gaetano but to his brother Ubaldo, who also trained with Ercole Lelli and was likely working alongside his brother when the present work was made.
Studies, or “sketches”, of this type were popular in 18th-century painting academies, where students progressed from copying drawings, engravings and casts after antique sculptures, to drawing nude models from life. The male figure, regarded as the foundation of painting and sculpture, is the invariable subject of these studies, which were often transformed into more complex compositions for historical or allegorical pictures.
We are grateful to Dott.ssa Donatella Biagi Maino for endorsing the attribution to Ubaldo Gandolfi on the basis of photographs.