A standing male nude

Datable to the mid 1560s, at the time of the artist’s enrolment in the Florentine Accademia del Disegno in 1564, this nude study is an eloquent expression of Santi di Tito’s innovative naturalistic draughtsmanship. By adopting the stylistic clarity of the Early Renaissance and the art of Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, Santi di Tito rejected the dominant Mannerist aesthetic, promoting a radical reform through highly spontaneous life drawings. Carefully executed in a polished red chalk technique that delicately defines shades and contours of the slender body of the model, the sheet relates to a group of studies of similar size – often drawn from the same model – once pasted into two volumes assembled by Filippo Baldinucci (1624-1697) and now divided between the Uffizi and the Louvre. This sheet is closely comparable to two male nudes in the Louvre (inv. 1941) and the Uffizi (inv. 7728 F; S. Lecchini Giovannoni and M. Collareta, Disegni di Santi di Tito, Florence 1985, nos. 76, 77, figs. 88, 89), both after the same model and similarly defined by the soft handling of chalk. Drawings like the present one were instrumental in setting a new standard in the Florentine academic tradition, as later demonstrated by the work of his pupils and followers Gregorio Pagani, Ludovico Cigoli, Domenico Passignano, Andrea Boscoli and Jacopo da Empoli (N. Barbolani di Montauto in C. Giannotti and C. Pizzorusso, Puro, semplice e naturale nell’arte a Firenze tra Cinque e Seicento, Florence, 2014, p. 218).