Study of a Falling Male Nude

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

This previously unpublished double-sided sheet shows on either side a falling male nude, viewed from different perspectives. On the recto he is depicted bent forward, revealing his head, upper back and raised knees. The verso shows only the lower part of his body, with the emphasis on his legs. The pumped-up muscles, executed with fluid lines in brown ink over chalk outlines, are conspicuous.

Franz Koenigs acquired this drawing in 1926 as part of the D’Adda album. In the inventory of this album, the Elenco, the sheet was attributed to Titian (1488/1490-1576).^[1] The inscription on the verso also suggests this artist as the maker. Nevertheless, muscular figures like this are at first sight more reminiscent of the work of Venetian artists like Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) and Palma Giovane (1548/1550-1628), who often depicted similar seated or falling figures in their large-scale paintings and made corresponding swift pen-and-ink drawings. However, Albert Elen found an attribution to one of these artists not convincing enough and placed the drawing in the vicinity of Palma.

In the exuberantly muscled figure Aidan Weston-Lewis and Catherine Whistler cautiously recognize the hand of Francesco Maffei (1600/1620-1660).^[2] This artist was active a generation later than Tintoretto and Giovane, and his style mainly reflects that of his teacher Alessandro Maganza (1556-1632). Whistler stresses that Maffei’s drawings are an as yet unexplored area of research, so this attribution also remains speculative. For the time being it is consequently most plausible to locate the maker of this drawing in Venice in the first half of the seventeenth century.