Offered by Stéphane Renard Fine Art
The attribution to Pompeo Batoni has been confirmed by Professor Francesco Petrucci based upon a photography of the artwork.
16 ¼” x 20 ¼” (41.2 x 54.2 cm) - Framed: 21 5/8” x 26 1/8” (55 x 66.5 cm)
This impressive study of a nude man belongs to a series of comparably sized studies created by Pompeo Batoni. The golden-brown paper enhances the delicacy of the black chalk modeling, highlighted in places with lead white. The model's artificially extended pose contrasts with the absolute calm of his face, suggesting a deep abandonment to sleep.
1. Pompeo Batoni, the great Roman portraitist of the 18th century
Praised as Italy's last Old Master, Pompeo Batoni was the dominant painter in Rome in the middle years of the 18th century. His contemporaries recognized his pre-eminence, a position which Batoni maintained for a period of almost fifty intense and highly productive years. In 1759, Johann Winckelmann celebrated one of his portraits as "eins der ersten in der Welt" (one of the first in the world); and the artist Benjamin West, when commemorating his visit to Rome in 1760, complained that "the Italian artists of that day thought of nothing, looked at nothing but the work of Pompeio Battoni".
Batoni began his career in his native Lucca, where he worked as a decorator and engraver of precious metals in the workshop of his father, an eminent goldsmith. Before he turned twenty, Batoni left for Rome, where he studied classical antiquity and made copies after Rafaello and Carracci. He was distinguished for his history paintings that anticipated the Neoclassicism of the late eighteenth century, and for his large-scale portraits, famously of young British aristocrats on the Grand Tour. His paintings are notable for the freshness of coloring, strikingly natural tones, visual intensity combined with exquisite elegance and precision. Leopoldo Cicognara, the great Italian antiquarian, described Batoni's technique as "laboriosa finitezza olandese" (laborious Dutch finesse), thus underlining the remarkable, almost "un-Italian" quality of his painting, which we find here in the delicate rendering of this study of a nude man.
2. Description of the artwork
Batoni's drawings are quite rare today, as many of them have probably been destroyed when his studio was dispersed after the artist's death in 1787.
Our model is shown in profile, reclining on stone steps covered with drapery, which also supports his right leg and his right arm, the elbow of which is bent. His left leg rests on the ground, while his left arm, extended in line with his neck, rests on a boulder below. The dynamic positioning of his legs contrasts with the abandon of the upper body; his closed eyes suggest deep sleep, despite the acrobatic nature of his overall posture.
The sleep in which our young model is immersed evokes that of Endymion, the modest shepherd who becomes the lover of Diana/Selene, the goddess of the moon, after she discovers him asleep. However, this subject does not appear to have been painted by Batoni, and the study shown here was probably drawn from life, without the model's pose being specifically linked to a composition by the artist.
3. Related artworks
A number of similar-sized studies of nude men by Batoni are known, such as those in the Albertina in Vienna (inventory number 1346 and 1347 - 8th and 9th photos of the galery) or in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (inventory numbers 94.1050 and 94.1051). The two legs of the study conserved at the Albertina under number 1347 (9th photo of the galery), and the shadows they create, seem to us to be particularly close (on an inverted basis) to our drawing.
We thought it would be interesting to compare the face of our model with that of St. John the Baptist in one of the artist's most famous paintings, now destroyed (10th photo of the gallery). While this painting was dated circa 1740-1742, a version of Saint John the Baptist dated 1752 (currently with Agnew’s - last photo of the gallery) testifies to the artist's attachment to the same masculine ideal, which we also recognize in the beardless face represented in our drawing.
4. Framing
For this study, we have chosen a neoclassical gilded frame with a rais-de-cœur motif (France, 19th century).
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