Study of a Male Nude, after Michelangelo

Author: Albert Elen

The recto and the verso drawings on this study sheet are both related to the life-size marble sculpture Il Crepuscolo (Twilight or Dusk) by Michelangelo (1475-1564), which is part of the sculptural group of the marble funerary monument of Lorenzo II de’ Medici (1492-1519), duke of Urbino, in the Sacrestia Nuova (1520-34) of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. It is one of two large marble sculptures of nude allegorical figures reclining on two volutes on either side of the sarcophagus’s lid, one male, the other female, embodying twilight and dawn (L’Aurora). They are part of a larger scheme, The Times of Day, which also includes the similar personifications of night (La Notte) and day (Il Giorno) on the funerary monument of Giuliano II de’ Medici (1479-1517), duke of Nemours, on the opposite wall of the sacristy.

Michelangelo’s two funerary monuments became famous almost as soon as they were installed, drawing a lot of attention and admiration. Artists eagerly made copies after them in different media, in order to study Michelangelo’s virtuosity. Tintoretto’s biographer, Carlo Ridolfi, elaborating in 1584 on an earlier account by the artist’s contemporary Raffaello Borghini (1537-1588)^[1], recounts how Tintoretto, who never travelled outside the Veneto, obtained from Florence some ‘piccolo modelli’ (small-scale models) of the four allegorical sculptures of this monument made by Daniele da Volterra (c.1509-1566), which he studied by candlelight, making numerous drawings from different angles.^[2] These models were created in 1557 but, as Marciari (2018) has pointed out, Tintoretto must have had a replica of Michelangelo’s Twilight at his disposal at least a decade earlier because a quotation of the reclining figure can be discerned in a detail at lower right in his first great masterpiece, The Miracle of the Slave in Venice, which is dated 1548.^[3]

From around 1560, Tintoretto also involved his pupils, foremost among them three of his own young children, in his drawing classes, training their skills in draughtsmanship and demonstrating how to study the muscular bodies and dynamic postures of the sculptural models by changing the viewpoint and the position of the light source, thus creating strong contrasts of light and dark. The pupils tried their best to emulate their master’s example, absorbing his skills and using the same stock of paper and chalks, and their drawings are generally close to Tintoretto’s own, but often lacked the virtuosity of his handling of the medium. Because these drawings are mere working material they were not signed, and for lack of secure drawings by individual members of the workshop, apart from the most talented child, Domenico (1560-1635), it is practically impossible to distinguish between various hands. Most of the drawings not accepted as autograph works by the master or his son therefore remain anonymous and are classified as ‘workshop’. To judge from the hesitant and sketchy execution and overemphasized shadows, this drawing belongs to that category.^[4] The recto drawing is repeated on the reverse, or vice versa, but upside down, probably executed by the same hand. It is noteworthy that the drawn figure is lying almost horizontal, while the sculpture is at a somewhat oblique angle to the volute, which may be due to cropping of the sheet by a later owner who did not have the model in mind. A stronger study after this model of Twilight, also frontal and repeated on the reverse, but from a slightly higher viewpoint, is now in London.^[5] There is another, but more audacious study of the model, seen from above, by Tintoretto himself, now in Florence.^[6] In all, some forty studies by Jacopo Tintoretto (and his workshop) exist after sculptural models of Michelangelo’s Medici tomb sculptures in Florence.^[7]