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Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Male Torso

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Attributed to Baccio Bandinelli
1493-1560

Male Torso

ca. 1518-1520
5 3/16 x 6 1/16 inches (131 x 153 mm)
Red chalk on paper; verso: three perpendicular lines in pen and brown ink, set one inside the other, and ruled lines drawn with the stylus.
IV, 22:2

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

Notes
Formerly attributed to Rosso Fiorentino, 1494-1540; Francesco Salviati (1510-1563).
Description

The drawing was given to Rosso Fiorentino at the time of the Fairfax Murray collection catalog; later Eugene Carroll attributed it to Francesco Salviati, dating it to the early 1550s.1 Rhoda Eitel-Porter did not accept the drawing to be by either artist. Instead, she considered it to be an early sixteenth-century copy, either after a Renaissance master or an antique marble similar to the Torso Belvedere. Roger Ward, on the other hand, believed the study to be a work of ca. 1518-20 by Baccio Bandinelli – a proposal to which John Marciari is inclined.2 It is mounted together with a drawing of a head in red chalk, occasionally also given to Francesco Salviati, and thought to be for the same figure.3 The drawings are by different hands and unrelated.

Footnotes:

  1. Fairfax Murray 1905-12, 4: no. 22; Carroll 1971, 30.
  2. Ward 1982, 327-28, no. 260.
  3. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. IV, 22(1).
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed on verso, at upper center, in graphite, "Rosso"; at lower center, in graphite, "J / 2".
Watermark: Ladder in an escutcheon (Briquet 5929: Lucca, 1547-50).
Associated names
Rosso Fiorentino, 1494-1540, Formerly attributed to.
Salviati, Francesco, 1510-1563, Formerly attributed to.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Bibliography
Selected references: Fairfax Murray 1905-12, 4: no. 22 (as Rosso); Carroll 1971, 30 (as Salviati); Carroll 1976, 2: 498-99, no. F42 (as Salviati); Cheney 1982, 793-94, no. 3; Ward 1982, 327-28, no. 260 (as Bandinelli); Mortari, 1992, 241-42, no. 407.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, IV, 22, repr.
Artist
Bandinelli, Baccio
Classification
Drawing
Century Drawings
16th century
School
Italian
Catalog link
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Department
Drawings and Prints