BALDASSARE FRANCESCHINI, DIT IL VOLTERRANO | Recto: Study of a prisoner and study of a headVerso: Academy study of two male figures, one lying down

Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, L'Oeil et la Passion 2, Dessins baroques Italiens dans les collections privées françaises, 2015, pp.50-53, n°7, reproduit (notice par Catherine Monbeig Goguel)

Hinged to the mount at upper margin. Overall the drawing is in very good condition. Red chalk on the recto is strong and vibrant. There is some light staining around the edges of the sheet and there are several areas of abrasion across the verso, barely visible. Sold unframed.
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Strong and robust, the red chalk studies on both sides of this sheet are connected with Volterrano’s important fresco cycle in the courtyard of Villa Petraia, near Florence.  In 1636, Don Lorenzo de’Medici, the youngest son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I and his wife Cristina of Lorena, commissioned the young Volterrano to paint two groups of frescoes, beneath the twin loggias of the internal courtyard of the villa.  This prestigious commission was the first public project undertaken by Volterrano after completing his education with Matteo Rosselli and Giovanni da San Giovanni, and the influence of both these masters is particularly relevant in these frescoes, as is an awareness of Pietro da Cortona’s revolutionary Florentine frescoes of The Age of Gold and The Age of Silver, executed in the Stanza della Stufa, in Palazzo Pitti, in 1637, just as Volterrano was starting his work at Villa Petraia.

The handsome and extraordinary frescoes in Villa Petraia, completed around 1648, and the many related drawings which have survived, provide the main basis for the study and understanding of Volterrano’s early style.  The iconography of the series was devised by Don Lorenzo himself and Pier Francesco Rinuccini, to illustrate and celebrate illustrious episodes in the history of the Medici family.

The study on the recto of the Adrien sheet is a preparatory drawing for one of the Turkish prisoners who appear on the left side of the fresco portraying The Crown Prince Cosimo II de' Medici Receiving the Victors from Bona in Front of the Church of San Stefano in Pisa (fig. 1).   The figure, partially obscured, is the second in the line-up of three prisoners to the left of the scene.  Volterrano has clearly made this full figure, nude study from life.   The subsidiary sketch of a head in the upper left section of the Adrien sheet may correspond to the young man in the fresco who wields a turban over the prisoners beneath him.

The figure on the verso of the sheet relates to the man, seen from behind, at the far right of the fresco illustrating The triumphal entry of Cosimo I into Siena (fig 2).  Volterrano has again drawn his figure from the nude model, as in the sketch on the recto, in order to work out carefully the anatomy and pose.  In the fresco, the man seen from behind wears a large cloak, but can none the less be securely linked with the drawing thanks to the position of his outstretched left arm.  Catherine Monbeig Goguel, in her entry in the 2015 Rennes exhibition catalogue (see Exhibited), points out that the model who posed for the study on the verso of the Adrien sheet must also have been used by Volterrano for another figure, seen from behind, in the lunette depicting Clement VII crowning  Charles V.  Monbeig Goguel aptly describes Volterrano’s working method, observing: ‘il habille ses nus à la façon de mannequins vivants, mais en conserve rigoureusement le pose’.

Catherine Monbeig Goguel also notes that the black chalk study drawn underneath the male figure study on the verso is very much representative of Volterrano’s graphic style, and she suggests that it may relate to a frescoed tondo of The Sacrifice of Isaac, now in a Florentine Private Collection, which predates the artist’s work at Villa Petraia.

Although it is an early work by the artist, this handsome double-sided sheet, executed in the artist’s favoured medium of red chalk, allows us to appreciate the origins of Volterrano’s graphic style, and to understand the roots of his subsequent development.