Standing Male Saint

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

In this small pen-and-ink drawing, executed in loose lines and short horizontal hatching strokes, a standing figure with his right hand aloft holds his cloak closed with the left. The outlines of the head of a woman drawn in a similar free style appear on the verso.

Berenson identified the figure on the recto as St Anthony of Egypt, and classified the sheet as a late sketch by the Florentine artist Filippino Lippi (1457-1504).^[1] It cannot be said with certainty that the drawing actually does represent this saint, and the attribution is moreover very unlikely. Works by Lippi in Florence^[2] and New York^[3] do show that he also made pen-and-ink drawings with many short hatching strokes, but at the same time they reveal that he drew them energetically and worked them up with more details than is the case in our drawing. In the absence of further clues as to the maker of this drawing, we place it provisionally in the second half of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century in Florence.