Magazine: Winter 2014

By the early sixteenth century this process had been codified, beginning with rapid brainstorming sketches (called schizzi, and subsequently primi pensieri, or first thoughts), followed by studies of individual figures (or studi), and culminating with finished drawings (or modelli), which were then transferred to a full-scale cartoon (cartone). Among the numerous examples of figure studies in "Stages of Design" is Jacopo Tintoretto's combustible male nude preparatory [x1946-83] for a muscular angel in his Resurrection in the Scuola di San Rocco, Venice (1578—81) and probably based on a wax or clay figurine. Beyond its functional identity, the drawing also provides the perfect aesthetic and theoretical companion to the contemporary red-chalk study of a seated male model [x1948-579], made from life, by the lesser-known Florentine Mannerist Girolamo Macchietti. When seen together...the two chalk drawings provide a textbook contrast between the Venetian emphasis on painterly effects, or colorito (translated to broken contours and smudged shading), and the Florentine predilection for the linear qualities of disegno (as expressed in long continuous contours and precise modeling).