Two Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the Back

Two Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the Back

Cherubino Alberti (Zaccaria Mattia)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The nude figure above holds the sawlike "bretessed bend" that figures, with six stars, in the arms of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1536-1605, r. 1592-1605). Many such nude figures holding these emblems appear, in large or small scale, in the frescoed vault of the Sala Clementina in the Vatican Palace painted between 1596 and 1602 by the brothers Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti. The dismembered sketchbook from which this drawing came contained at least five other chalk studies of 'ignudi' associable with the Sala Clementina vault fresco. In addition, there are studies for these nude figures in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (see: Bora, 1976, no. 149, as Giovanni Alberti) and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1977, pp. 271-2; repr, Bollettino d'arte, LXV, 5, 1980, p. 51, fig. 22, as Giovanni Alberti).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the BackTwo Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the BackTwo Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the BackTwo Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the BackTwo Studies of a Seated Male Nude Seen from the Back

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.