FRANCESCO SA LVI AT I (Francesco dei Rossi)
CIRCA 1510-1563
43 Reclining Male Nude
Red chalk and white chalk heightening; H: 27 cm (io^5 /s
in.); W: 39.7 cm (i5^5 /sin.)
86.GB.574
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: (Verso) inscribed di Fr.
Sal... i in light brown ink.
PROVENANCE: Sale, Sotheby's, London, July 4, 1985, lot
15; art market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. Turner, Florentine Drawings of the
Sixteenth Century, exh. cat. (British Museum, London,
1986), p. 182, under no. 132.
THIS ADDITION TO THE CORPUS OF SALVIATI DRAW-
ings was attributed to him by C. Monbeig-Goguel and
P. Pouncey, the latter of whom suggested that it may
have been made with a decorative figure above a door-
way in mind.^1 The sheet has been associated by Turner
(1986) with a study of a young man seated on the ground
(British Museum inv. 1946-7-13-519) which is very
similar in technique and in details such as the hands.
The Getty drawing is based on a classical sculpture,
the Hercules Chiaramonti (Vatican Museums), which
was known in the sixteenth century and which—in this
or another version—was copied by Sebastiano del
Piombo in a drawing in the Ambrosiana, Milan (inv.
F29O, no. 22).^2 The head, right forearm, and right leg be-
low the knee are Salviati's reconstructed additions to the
damaged statue. This use of classical sculpture would
reasonably have coincided with his expanded interest in
Michelangelo and with his own monumental figure style
at the middle of the century. Evidence for the latter is his
copy after the former's Hercules in the Louvre (inv. 1665)
and his other sculptural drawings of the period, includ-
ing the abovementioned sheet in the British Museum and
another drawing in the Louvre (inv. 1657), showing a re-
clining woman with a book. The latter is comparable to
the Getty sheet in the treatment of details such as the
hands, feet, and drapery folds as well as in its analogous
pose.- In conversation with G. Goldner, 1986.
- P. Bober and R. Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique
Sculpture (Oxford, 1986), pp. 168-69, no. 133.
112 ITALIAN SCHOOL • SALVIATI