Andrea Boscoli

The figure of the martyred St. Sebastian is taken from Rosso Fiorentino's 1522 altarpiece, The Madonna enthroned with Ten Saints, in Palazzo Pitti, Florence.¹ Boscoli made copies after other masters throughout his career, and they are an important part of his graphic work.  Of the forty-two drawings by him in the Cabinet des Dessins at the Louvre, for example, eighteen are copies after artists such as Correggio, Lattanzio Gambara, Bernardino Poccetti and Pontormo.² 

We are very grateful to Julian Brooks for informing us that St. Sebastian's pose as seen in this drawing was twice used by Boscoli in his painted works:  firstly in 1592, for the figure of Apollo in the artist's fresco cycle at the Villa Corliano, near Pisa, and subsequently, as Saint Sebastian himself, in an altarpiece painted for the Duomo, Macerata.  Although the pose is somewhat modified in the latter painting, Boscoli's preparatory drawing shows the saint much as we see him in the Horvitz sheet. 

Dr. Brooks also notes that the highly finished manner in which the drawing has been executed, with its careful construction and clearly defined limits to the black chalk shading on the right and left edges, suggests that it was a design intended to be kept and used as a reference for Boscoli's painted work.  On stylistic grounds, Dr. Brooks dates the drawing to circa 1605, when Boscoli had just returned from the Marches and before he went to Rome, where he died in 1608.  As both works in which the artist refers to the figure precede this date, the implication is that Rosso's composition had a profound effect on Boscoli, lasting throughout his career.  

1. R.P. Ciardi and A. Mugnaini, Rosso Fiorentino, Catalogo Completo, Florence 1991, cat. no. 15

2. F. Viatte, Musée du Louvre, Inventaire Générale des dessins Italiens III; Dessins Toscans XVIe-XVIIIe Siècles, Tome I, 1560-1640, Paris 1988, p. 41, cat. nos. 69-85