Recto: Nude Youth in Profile with His Left Foot on a Block;

Verso: Bearded Nude in Profile with His Wrists Resting on a Large Tall Cut Branch

Florence, Uffizi, no. 6473F.

Fig.RD.8, recto
Fig.RD.8, verso

Recto: red chalk; verso: pen and ink with the back of the figure shaded in red chalk; 40.3 x 23.3.  Inscribed in ink at the bottom of the verso: Mich Ang g(?).  There is a very small sketch of a male nude seen from the back at the lower right.

LITERATURE:

Berenson, 1903, no. 2406, as Rosso.

Kusenberg, 1931, 135, 139, no. 13, as Rosso, the verso perhaps a copy of a drawing by Bandinelli.

Berenson, 1938, no. 2406, the recto and verso now looking more like Bandinelli.

Barocchi, 1950, 206 and n. 3, Fig. 184 (recto), the recto as Rosso, in his Roman period, the verso as not by Rosso and closer to Bandinelli.

Bologna and Causa, 1952, 59 (recto), as Rosso.

Antal, 1956, 63, n. 100, and Fig. 24b (recto), as Rosso in Rome.

Carroll, 1964 (1976), II, Bk. 2, 456-457, F. 8, 540, Bk. 3, Figs. 148-149, as Bandinelli in the mid-1520s.

Jaffé, 1994, T and U, under no. 57 (900), as Rosso.¹

 

Since Berenson attributed the drawing to Rosso the recto has been continually attributed to him although the verso has also been associated with Bandinelli.  I do not see any differences in conception or handling, only in media, between the recto and the verso, and thought that they were both by Bandinelli.  Ward in 1982 did not catalogue the drawing, indicating that he did not think it is by Bandinelli.

Neither the lumpy muscular figure of the recto nor the stereotypical muscular nude of the verso resemble Rosso’s figures, and the graphic vagueness of the recto and the regularity of the penmanship of the verso are not relatable to the draughtsmanship of any drawings certainly attributable to Rosso.  The drawing still seems to me Bandinellian, and by the same artist who did several other drawings, listed in RD.3, that have been wrongly attributed to Rosso, or by a closely related artist with a very similar Bandinellian style.  The penmanship of the verso is related to that of the Two Old Seated Women Conversing in St. Petersburg (Fig.RD.35).  It is very similar also to that of a pen and ink Nude Male Seen from the Back with His Left Foot Raised on a Rock in a private collection in Italy that has been attributed to Vincenzo de’ Rossi and dated in or shortly after 1560.²  The penmanship is also like that of Bandini’s drawings.³