Vincenzo Gemito
Male nude seated, partially covered by drapery
Auction Closed
January 25, 04:44 PM GMT
Estimate
18,000 - 22,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Vincenzo Gemito
Naples 1852 - 1929
Male nude seated, partially covered by drapery
Pen and brown ink over traces of pencil, heightened with white;
signed and dated in brown ink, center right: GEMITO. / 1914
518 by 458 mm; 20⅜ by 18 in.
This highly refined and overtly sexual study of a Male nude seated, partially covered by drapery bears a striking resemblance, compositionally speaking, to the famous reclining figure of the Barberini Faun, a classical statue of which numerous copies existed in Gemito's time in Rome.
A highly comparable sheet, previously on the New York art market, depicting a Male Nude seated against a leopard skin,1 executed on manuscript paper, shows the same male figure in a near identical pose, albeit with some differences in the positioning of the right leg. The present work also contains substantial and highly effective passages of white heightening, which the aforementioned work does not possess. These provide a certain luminosity and additional modelling to the figure that make the correspondence between the drawn work and the marble Barberini Faun all the more compelling.
1. See Kate Ganz USA Ltd., New York, cat. 11, Vincenzo Gemito, Drawings & Sculpture in Naples & Rome, 2000, no. 25