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Lot Essay
Trained with Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Battista Naldini, Francesco Morandini, known as Poppi form his birth place in Tuscany, is a key figure of the Florentine Maniera under the first Medici Grand Dukes. A fine example of Poppi’s refined style and a record of drawing practice in the Florentine Accademia del Disegno towards the 1570s, the present sheet represents a remarkable new addition to the artist’s catalogue. It features five head studies after Michelangelo’s celebrated funerary portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici at San Lorenzo, Florence, where the younger generations of artists belonging to the Accademia practised their draughtsmanship.
Confidently drawn with chalk, the sheet relates to a study of similar size, done on blue paper – and probably part of the same sketchbook – now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2003.371), featuring six studies after a boy’s head. Following a practice adopted in other sketchbook sheets in the Uffizi (see A. Giovannetti, Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi, Florence, 1995, nos. D18-44, ill.), Poppi changed his point of view for each study, filling the page with the same motif from various angles in order to achieve a full understanding of the sculpture’s volume. Through these copies, Poppi absorbed Michelangelo’s figural language and reused it as a source for his pictorial work, as proven by the reappearance of the Medici-type head in the apostle seen far left in his Last Supper (circa 1582, Chiesa del Gesù, Castel Fiorentino).
According to the chronology proposed by Giovannetti (op. cit., p. 216), the sheets from the Uffizi sketchbook can be dated between 1571-72, during Poppi’s supposed Roman sojourn, and April 1572, when he was unanimously accepted as a member of the Accademia.
Confidently drawn with chalk, the sheet relates to a study of similar size, done on blue paper – and probably part of the same sketchbook – now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2003.371), featuring six studies after a boy’s head. Following a practice adopted in other sketchbook sheets in the Uffizi (see A. Giovannetti, Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi, Florence, 1995, nos. D18-44, ill.), Poppi changed his point of view for each study, filling the page with the same motif from various angles in order to achieve a full understanding of the sculpture’s volume. Through these copies, Poppi absorbed Michelangelo’s figural language and reused it as a source for his pictorial work, as proven by the reappearance of the Medici-type head in the apostle seen far left in his Last Supper (circa 1582, Chiesa del Gesù, Castel Fiorentino).
According to the chronology proposed by Giovannetti (op. cit., p. 216), the sheets from the Uffizi sketchbook can be dated between 1571-72, during Poppi’s supposed Roman sojourn, and April 1572, when he was unanimously accepted as a member of the Accademia.