Italian School

This highly accomplished drawing in the manner of a Federkunststück portrays the torso of a dancing satyr. It is modelled on a Roman copy from the first century AD after a Greek prototype, of which some forty versions have survived. In the present instance, the artist probably referred to a variant from the former Farnese Collection in Rome that were transferred in 1826 to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, where the sculpture remains to this day. Interestingly, our sheet has on the verso a faded red chalk sketch of the lower legs of the famous Hercules Farnese. This statue was placed in the courtyard loggia of the palace of the same name by Alessandro Farnese who, as Pope Paul III, was Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church from 1534 to 1549.

The present drawing by an experienced anonymous Italian artist is distinguished by its extremely sensitive and delicate linework that renders the fasciae and pronounced back muscles with a velvety softness and beguiling, all but tactile three-dimensionality. The body seems to veritably throb with life – an impression considerably enhanced by the subtle, effective chiaroscuro and the warm, finely modulated brown tone of the ink. A very fine blackish-brown contour line gives the torso an added sturdiness.

EUR 18,000