Studies of Female Nudes – recto

Studies of Standing and Kneeling Figures – verso

Recto: pen and brown ink.
Verso: red chalk

236 x 147 mm.

Provenance: Charles Gasc, Paris (lugt 542) and Norbert L. H. H. Roesler, New York.

FRANCESCO FURINI
Florence 1603 ~ 1646 Florence

Francesco Furini worked principally in Florence for the Medici family who were now Grand Dukes of Tuscany. On the death of Giovanni da San Giovanni, he continued the latter's commission for the grand cycle of frescoes in the Sala degli Argenti, Pitti Palace (1639–1642). He is principally known for his sensual paintings of beautiful female nudes.

The recto of our drawing, with its quick, nervous line and elongated figures is a fine example of Furini's approach to a primo pensiero or preliminary sketch. In style it can be compared to one of his more finished sheets, The Expulsion from Paradise,¹ Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, also executed in pen and brown ink. The curving movement of Adam and Eve reflects that of the swaying pair of figures, top left, in our drawing. A similar freedom of line is visible in the Ashmolean angel and the curious long, cleft feet have their counterpart in the barely defined feet in our sheet. The recto has not been identified with a specific painting or fresco but it has been suggested that the long, slender, female figures are similar, in their grace and sensuality, to figures in two of Furini's preparatory drawings for the fresco, Lorenzo the Magnificent Amongst the Poets and Philosophers by the statue of Plato,² Sala degli Argenti. However, the idea of studies for a composition of Diana and Callisto has also been put forward.

Pen and ink is an unusual medium for Furini: the red chalk used for the verso is much more typical. The abstract approach to these sketches is rare but comparable drawings are in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. The recto carries an autograph inscription 'Furini' as does another drawing formerly in the Ratjen Foundation, Vaduz.³ Our verso bears the inscription 'gio da S. Gio' in ink but probably in an eighteenth century hand.

1. John Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings, vol. II, Italian School, Oxford, 1956, No.848, The Expulsion from Paradise.

2. One drawing is at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Inv. 1932.305, and the other at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, Inv. 1101F.

3. Italienische Zeichnungen del 16.–18. Jahrhunderts Stiftung Ratjen, Munich, 1977, no.48, p.108 and Katrin Bellinger, Drawings in Florence 1500–1650, exh. cat., London, 1991, no. 26 illus.