This fascinating drawing, previously attributed to Naldini (see Literature), is executed with a strong and vigorous use of the black chalk heightened with white chalk, on blue paper, a colorful background that contrasts well with the reassured black chalk lines.  Giovanni Balducci, a pupil of Naldini (c.1537-1591), was active first in Florence, and owes a lot to the style of his master, although his lines, as we can see in the present sheet, are less angular and energetic and less reminiscent of Naldini's master, Pontormo (1494-1557), with whom Naldini worked from 1549 to 1556.  Chalk drawings by Balducci of single figures in chalk are rare, and we are more familiar with his pen and ink compositional studies, often executed on blue paper, a support that the artist seems often to have chosen.  John Gere and Philip Pouncey have tentatively suggested an attribution to Balducci for a drawing in the British Museum, A Youth seated on the ground, executed in the same media, but squared in black rather than red chalk.¹

Balducci was actively involved in a number of important commissions in Florence during the 1580s, but in 1594 he moved with Agostino Ciampelli to Rome, at the invitation of Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici.  After his Roman sojourn, he travelled to Naples, as part of the retinue of Cardinal Gesualdo.  There he stayed until his death some thirty years later, enjoying considerable artistic success, and contributing with his Tuscan idiom to the late mannerism in vogue in the city, which was also influenced by the presence of some Northern painters. 

^1. London, British Museum, inv. no. T,11.65; see N. Turner, Florentine Drawings of the Sixteenth Century, exh. cat., London, British Museum, 1986, no. 182, reproduced fig. 182