Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)

Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)

Nosadella (Giovanni Francesco Bezzi)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vividly rendered with pen and brown ink, brown wash over red chalk, this study was attributed to Nosadella, a pupil of Pellegrino Tibaldi, by Lawrence Turcic in 1979. His suggestion received confirmation in the old annotation, "nosadela", that was revealed when the drawing was removed from its old mount in 1980. The handling of pen and wash in the Museum's drawing is tipycal of the artist, may be usefully compared with that in a study of the kneeling Virgin by Nosadella in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. D 1530). The Edinburgh drawing is related to Nosadella's painting with The Presentation in the Temple (private collection; Sotheby's, July 15, 1970, no. 73 and Christie's, April 24, 1981, no. 95).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)Kneeling Bearded Old Man (recto); Section of a Draped Limb and Sketches (verso)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.