Study for a Standing Young Man, Raising a Curtain and Looking at Left
1518–19
Medium
Red chalk
Dimensions
15 x 10-5/16 in. (38.1 x 26.2 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1996
Accession Number
1996.177
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
Created by the Florentine artist Baccio Bandinelli around 1518–19, this red-chalk drawing exemplifies the lively preparatory studies that Renaissance sculptors used to explore pose, anatomy, and movement. Bandinelli, a leading figure of the Mannerist generation and a frequent rival of Michelangelo, often produced such sheets while planning ambitious marble or bronze figures destined for public spaces in Florence and Rome. The young man’s raised arm and turned head suggest he may have been conceived as part of a larger narrative scene—perhaps a curtain being drawn back to reveal a dramatic even...
About the Artist
Baccio Bandinelli · 1493–1560
Bandinelli was the son of Michelangelo de'Brandini, a successful Florentine goldsmith. Baccio was a loyal subject of the Medici, even when they were in exile 1494-1513; consequently he was rewarded by receiving commissions after the elections to the papacy of Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) and Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici), and after Cosimo de' Medici became Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1537. His polit...