A group of men capturing a nude man

This large and powerful sheet was long believed by Michelangelo Buonarroti. The technique in pen and ink over traces of red chalk is close to that of artists working in the circle of Michelangelo and that of his contemporary, the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. Bandinelli was a prolific draftsman and, together with many drawings in red chalk, he produced hundreds of studies in pen and ink executed with a distinctive use of crosshatching. The technique was employed by several artists active in Florence at the time such as the eccentric Jacopo di Giovanni di Francesco, known as Jacone (1495-1553), and also Alonso Berruguete (1488-1561) who worked in Florence on several occasions (F. Viatte, Baccio Bandinelli. Dessins, sculptures, peintures, Paris, 2011, pp. 33-34).

The figures on this sheet are drawn with a clean outline and their volumes are defined by a web of hatching and crosshatching. The anatomy has a sculptural quality; the figures are closely concentrated on the paper, overlapping as if they were sculpted in a marble relief. The features of the faces are fierce, almost grotesque, and the gestures powerful and tense.

The drawing is presented in an 18th Century limewood frame lavishly decorated with hunting motifs – the heads of a boar and of a stag, arrows, a horn, and foliage. A similar, yet more elaborate, frame was sold at auction in 1999 in the sale of the Alexander collection (Christie’s, New York, 30 April 1999, lot 127).