Drawing of the Month #13

Alessandro Allori (1535-1607)

Young Woman seated on her Haunches, holding an open Book in her Lap with both Hands

Black chalk, 363 x 245 mm, British Museum, London, 1886-6-9-33

The entry is extracted from Nicholas Turner’s Florentine Drawings of the sixteenth century, 1986, London, pp. 206-208, no. 155.

This is one of the finest and most finished of the artist's surviving drawings and may well have been intended for presentation. It well illustrates the pronounced naturalistic tendency of Allori's mature work. The figure is that of Mary in the altarpiece of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in the chapel of the Palazzo Portinari-Salviati (now Banca Toscana) in Florence, painted in 1580. An almost identical figure occurs on the extreme left in the carlier Raising of Lazarus painted for S. Agostino at Montepulciano.

Pupil of Bronzino. In 1549 he assisted his master with the production of cartoons for the borders of the tapestries of the Stories of Joseph for the Palazzo Vecchio. He was in Rome in 1554, where he studied the Antique and Michelangelo, returning to Florence in 1559, where he began the altarpiece and frescoes of the Cappella Montauto, SS Annunziata (1559-60). In 1564 he participated in the funeral celebrations for Michelangelo and in c.1570 contributed two paintings to the studiolo of Francesco de' Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio. With the death of Vasari in 1574 he became court painter to the Medici, completing in 1576-82 the salone of Leo X in the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano and taking charge of the Medici tapestries. Although much influenced by Bronzino and Michelangelo, there is a strongly realistic tendency in his work which is transitional between the High Mannerism of the middle of the century and the neo-Naturalism of the end. He was a prolific and accomplished draughtsman.