Bartholomeo Cesi Man carrying a Bundle of Sticks, Studies of an Arm (recto) Red chalk heightened with white on blue paper (recto), black chalk (verso) PROVENANCE This is a study of the same studio model, in the same pose carrying a bundle of wood, as the figure on a sheet in a New York private collection, but seen from the opposite viewpoint. Given the specific nature of the studies, they may have been made in preparation for a painting or fresco which remains unidentified. In our drawing, the boy's head is hidden behind the bundle of sticks and the costume is arranged to reveal more of the youth's musculature. There are two subsidiary studies of the youth's right arm. It is rare to find two complimentary studies of a model and pose, made at the same moment, by a sixteenth-century artist. The date of the drawing can be easily ascertained, since a design showing the head of a veiled woman on the verso of the New York drawing is preparatory for the figure of the Virgin in Cesi's altarpiece, Crucifixion with the Virgin, St. John, St. Mark and St. Anthony Abbot, now in the Cassa di Risparmio, Cesena. The painting was executed in the early 1590s, 'when Cesi was at the height of his powers', according to Grasselli. On the verso of our sheet is a study for a male saint, possibly an Evangelist. Initially an exponent of the Mannerist school, from the 1580s Cesi began to work in the new naturalistic style pioneered by the Caracci family. Like them, he chose to draw from life, using as models the servants and workshop assistants with whom he was in daily contact. |
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