Seated Nude Boy

Author: Michael Kwakkelstein

The present drawing depicts a nude infant seated on what could be interpreted as a parapet. He appears to be looking down while making a gesture with his left hand, the index finger of which is slightly raised. A later hand has retouched the drawing with a darker ink on several points, including the infant’s left eye, making it difficult to establish the exact direction of his gaze.

Comparably quick and summarily rendered depictions in pen and ink of infants with little or no internal modelling are found among the drawings attributed to the Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio.^[1] No identically posed infant recurs in his work, but the motif invites comparison to that of an infant illustrated in a group of metalpoint drawings on coloured paper that have been attributed to artists from Verrocchio’s circle (Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521), Lorenzo di Credi (1456/1459-1537) and Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507).^[2] These drawings record a sculpted model of a seated infant that may have originated from Verrocchio’s workshop. The careful execution of these drawings, including the application of white pigment, reflects the artist’s concern with the interplay between light and shade to suggest rilievo or the three-dimensionality of the infant’s form. These concerns were evidently not shared by the artist of the Rotterdam drawing, who was interested above all in recording the infant’s pose by drawing its outlines.