Andrea SACCHI and workshop (1599 – 1661) - Study of Vulcan or Cyclops man

If this drawing presents, at first sight, the aspect of an academy, the pose of the model is too specific to be only a simple exercise. In fact, the athleticism of the middle-aged man, the raised arm, seems to indicate a blacksmith brandishing a heavy hammer, like those regularly observed in the representations of the Vulcan forge.
It turns out that a painting by Sacchi, preserved in the Schönborn-Buchheim Palace in Vienna, depicts the surrender to Thetis of the arms of Achilles in the smithy of Vulcan. Our drawing could be a step in the preparatory process of this painting published by Arnaud Brejon de Lavergnée. After a careful photographic examination of our blood, Ann Sutherland Harris considers that it was done by the master and reworked by a hand of the workshop.
The Academies of Sacchi were so popular that they were copied a lot during his lifetime and even after his death, with more or less talent.
We thank Professor Ann Sutherland Harris for his invaluable assistance in the study of this drawing.
Comparative Bibliography: Arnaud Brejon de Lavergnée, Rome 1630 at the Schönborn-Buchheim Palace in Vienna: two paintings by Pierre de Cortone and Andrea Sacchi, in "Revue de l'art", No. 109, 1995- 3, pp. 53-59
Ann Sutherland Harris, "Master Drawings," No. 4, 1971, pp. 384-391 and "Master Drawings", 1973, pp. 160-161