Two Studies of a Man
Santi di Tito
ca. 1575 · Black chalk (recto); rulings in red chalk and black chalk by early collector (verso) · Drawings and Prints
A pupil of Bronzino and Alessandro Allori, Santi di Tito was among the founders in 1563 of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno (the Academy of Drawing). He had a leading role among the generation of late-sixteenth-century Tuscan painters who turned to the practice of carefully observed life drawing to direct their pictorial language away from an abstract Mannerist vocabulary and toward one of greater naturalism. Of great psychological presence, the figure of the balding, bearded man with a flaccid torso in this life study is portrayed with uncompromising veracity. The artist played the softly blended chalk against the white of the paper to create a delicate luminous effect. The naturalistic vocabulary of the figure is reminiscent of Santi di Tito's Resurrection altarpiece in Santa Croce, Florence of 1573–74, and The Supper at Emaus of 1574.
- Artist
- Santi di Tito
- Date
- ca. 1575
- Medium
- Black chalk (recto); rulings in red chalk and black chalk by early collector (verso)
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Credit line
- Purchase, Guy Wildenstein Gift, 2002
