Nude Male Figure with Upraised Right Arm

Nude Male Figure with Upraised Right Arm

Girolamo Romanino

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The historical attribution of this drawing to Romanino is due to the Milanese Eighteenth-century collector and connoisseur Sebastiano Resta, who annotated the sheet on top "Gerolamo Romanino Prattico / Pittore Bresciano" (Resta's autography was recognized by Carmen Bambach and endorsed by Alessandro Nova in 2005, see here Bibliography). Jacob Bean accepted Florence Kossoff's proposal that this might have been a preparatory study for the figure of Adam in the scene of Christ's Descent into Limbo, painted by Romanino between 1534-35 in a fresco cycle for the church of Santa Maria della Neve, Pisogne. The drawing, like the Pisogne fresco, probably dates from the last decade of Romanino's life (the previously published date of ca. 1574 seems incorrect in view of the artist's probable death date). In Carmen Bambach's opinion, the resemblance between the drawing and Pisogne fresco seems generic rather than direct; the poses and physical types of the male figures seem quite different. (Furio Rinaldi, 2014, based on a curatorial remark by Carmen C. Bambach of June, 2005)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nude Male Figure with Upraised Right ArmNude Male Figure with Upraised Right ArmNude Male Figure with Upraised Right ArmNude Male Figure with Upraised Right ArmNude Male Figure with Upraised Right Arm

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.