BERNARDO BARBATELLI, called POCCETTI

San Mariano di Valdelsa 1548 — 1612 Florence

A Standing Draped Male Figure Gesticulating to Another at his Left

red chalk with white chalk heightening. 123/4 x 61/4" (320 x 160 mm). squared for transfer in black chalk.

provenance:
from an album probably assembled in the 19th century and most recently in an English collection.

As Phillipe de Costamagna has kindly pointed out, this striking drawing is probably a study for the figures in the front left corner of one of four of Poccetti’s frescoed lunettes in the choir of Santa Maria degli Angeli in the great church of Santissima Annunziata, Florence, circa 1604. Compositional studies for this fresco are conserved in the Uffizi1 and the Galleria Nationale delle Stampe, Rome (F.C.130585).

As Nicolas Turner has observed, Poccetti’s style is difficult to characterise.2 He was primarily a fresco painter, first on palace facades, then decorating church and palace interiors. He was more a naturalist than a Mannerist, taking up the cause of Santi di Tito. Yet the present sheet harks back to the technique of Andrea del Sarto and the style of Pontormo. Those two great artists, though a generation or two removed, continued to exert a huge influence on Florentine art for the rest of the Cinquecento and indeed well into the Seicento.

Janet Cox-Rearick independently proposed the same attribution for this handsome study.

A closely comparable drawing though in black chalk of a Standing Saint with part of a Second Standing Figure is in the Uffizi.3
1

Paul Hamilton, Disegni di Bernardino Poccetti, Florence, 1980, pp.71-12, cat # 59 , inv.# 8296 F.

2

Nicholas Turner, Florentine Drawings of the 16th Century, British Museum, London, 1986, p.243.

3

Sixteenth Century Tuscan Drawings from the Uffizi, cat. #73, illust. p.173.