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Seated Male Nude, Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Whereas [many]... drawings belong to a sequence of preliminary studies leading to a finished product... Seated male Nude by Gianlorenzo Bernini is a self-sufficient work. By comparison with the bulk of his small surviving graphic oeuvre, which consists primarily of quick sketches for architectural and sculptural projects in Rome, this magnificent drawing belongs to a handful of finished red-chalk life studies (or academies) of muscular male nudes, most of which are in the Uffizi in Florence and the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig. Modest in scale yet powerfully three-dimensional in its effect, the drawing displays Bernini's economical handling of red chalk in his creation of fleeting monumentality, whereby the medium, together with touches of white chalk, does not so much delineate forms as suggest patches of shading, evoking flickering light and surrounding atmosphere.
Dating from early in Bernini's career, this drawing may have been executed in the context of the informal life-drawing classes that he is said to have staged in his studio, and at the time of such large narrative sculptures as Apollo and Daphne, Pluto and Persephone, and David, all carried out between 1618 and 1624. While those works emphasize motion, this seated youth shares with the male protagonists a highly articulated torso as well as a contained and tightly coiled energy, suggesting imminent action. Bernini's model turns away from the viewer, transcending the boundaries of his fixed pose as he becomes engaged, and thereby engages us in the passing moment of an unspecified scene that the artist leaves to our imagination.
Dating from early in Bernini's career, this drawing may have been executed in the context of the informal life-drawing classes that he is said to have staged in his studio, and at the time of such large narrative sculptures as Apollo and Daphne, Pluto and Persephone, and David, all carried out between 1618 and 1624. While those works emphasize motion, this seated youth shares with the male protagonists a highly articulated torso as well as a contained and tightly coiled energy, suggesting imminent action. Bernini's model turns away from the viewer, transcending the boundaries of his fixed pose as he becomes engaged, and thereby engages us in the passing moment of an unspecified scene that the artist leaves to our imagination.
