Drawing of the month #6
FEDERICO BAROCCI (C. 1533-1612)
Virile torso with a reclining head (a study for the Perugia’s Deposition), 1568-69
Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper, with spots of vermilion, salmon, and ochre oil paint, 212 x 227 mm, Private Collection
Luca will be giving a talk at the Salon du Dessin’s international symposium on Thursday 21st March: “A Star that Bewitches People: The Georgian Drawings of Father Cristoforo Castelli (1632-1654)”
Luca Baroni, director of the Rete Museale Marche Nord and author of federico Barocci’s catalogue raisonné (forthcoming, summer 2024), has kindly chosen our sixth drawing of the month
When Covid-19 arrived in early 2020, I was stuck in London for three months. At that time, I was preparing my doctoral thesis concerning the new catalogue raisonné of the Urbino artist Federico Barocci (c. 1533-1612). It was during those strange weeks, being confined at home, that a private collector sent me the drawing reproduced here. He kindly left me the original "to keep me company" and as an incentive to continue my research despite the difficult circumstances.
My quarantine companion, a sketch of a male torso with a bowed head in black and white chalk on blue paper, can be connected to the altarpiece of the Deposition, painted by Barocci for the Cathedral of Perugia in 1568-69. Until recently, the drawing was hidden on the back of a pastel head study for the same composition and has therefore retained much of its freshness. The sheet is evidently a short note, later reused by the artist to give life to the drawing on the recto and probably not destined to survive. Precisely for this reason, however, it allows us to intimately penetrate the artist's creative daily life. The multi-coloured paint stains (which always reminded me of the fake blood stains left by the Canterville Ghost in his fight against the Paragon detergent) evoke the permanence of the sheet on the worktable, and it is somehow moving to be still able to identify today the same colours (pink, red, orange) on the finished canvas.
When I first saw the drawing, my immediate thought was "If there wasn't an artist called Barocci, this drawing would probably be called a Titian." The impression does not derive only from the medium and the subject chosen, similar to Titian's sketch of a Deposition in the Uffizi: but from the extraordinary strength with which Barocci shapes the naked virile figure of Christ, a proportionate and beautiful body captured in the moment in which life fades. As subsequently emerged during the research, the link between Barocci and Titian is not entirely casual. Not only were the Venetian artist's paintings and drawings widely visible and admired in Urbino; but when the altarpiece of the Deposition was first shown to the public, on 24 December 1569, a contemporary commentator, Raffaele Sotii, declared that "It is believed that that work should be held by experts of the highest value, because Messer Federigo is a great imitator of Tiziano Vecello and because it shows a reality truly new, artificial, full of grace and goodness in every part". If the painting does not immediately recall Titian, the sketch certainly does: a further proof of the incredible importance of drawing in Barocci's work, as a key to penetrate his inexhaustible creative soul.
