Double-sided
drawing Front: ITALIAN
SCHOOL OF THE BEGINNING OF THE XVIth CENTURY, ENTOURAGE OF RAPHAEL
Seated young man holding a flute
Pen and brown ink
18 x 12 cm
Stamp of the Prince of Line
Back: ITALIAN
SCHOOL OF THE BEGINNING OF THE XVIth CENTURY Study of skull
Pen and watercolour
Annotated by Van Heemskerk on an old mounting
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This double-sided work is of great interest in the history of Italian Renaissance art. The front represents a very characteristic male figure, close to the male studies of Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael. This flautist can be found in a famous engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, which is said to have been executed after a drawing by Raphael. Adam Bartsch, in his catalogue raisonné of Raimondi's works, suggests seeing an engraving based on a drawing by Raimondi himself or by Bandinelli1. The figure, naked in the engraving, wears a veil here, which covers his sex and seems to have been added a posteriori to the composition. It should be noted that Raimondi had been struck by censorship for his engravings, based on drawings by Giulio Romano, illustrating Pierre l'Arétin's Sonnets luxurieux in 1526.
The verso, representing a skull study of great precision, is the result of careful observation, as the artists were attached to it after Leonardo da Vinci. This human skull, shown in full frontal view and drawn with great anatomical precision, strikes the viewer with the violence implied by such a crude representation of death, despite the delicacy of the watercolour. This study heralds the motif of vanities that runs through the art of the following centuries and becomes a universal allegory of death and the passage of time.
This drawing of a skull is to
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