This dynamic study sheet, depicting a reclining nude with subsidiary studies of his left leg and hand, is preparatory for the ignudo to the left of the standing allegorical personification of Benignity in the northeast corner of the Sala Clementina vault (fig. 1).1 In 1596, Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini commissioned the brothers, Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti to fresco the Sala Clementina in the Vatican. The decoration was ambitious, combining real and fictive architecture with a magnificent illusionistic ceiling opening to the sky.
The present study demonstrates the artist working out the pose for the ignudo by sketching the full reclining figure but also carrying out further studies of the hands and leg, exploring various angles in order to achieve the correct foreshortening. These studies would have been drawn from a live studio model, where careful observation of pose could be considered before embarking on the final fresco design.
Another study, for the same ignudo in this monumental project, was also formerly in the Ratjen collection.2 A number of other preparatory studies are known for the ceiling but relatively few survive for the ignudi. In addition to the Ratjen drawings, other examples include those housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York3, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan4 and the Uffizi, Florence.5
1. For a full discussion on the project see: M.C. Abromson, 'Clement VIII's Patronage of the Brothers Alberti', The Art Bulletin, September 1978, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 531-41
2. Hermann-Fiore, op.cit., 1980, p. 52, fig. 24
3. J. Bean, 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1982, p. 19, cat. no. 3, reproduced
4. G. Bora, I disegni del Codice Resta, Bologna 1976, p. 142, cat. no. 149, reproduced
5. Herrmann-Fiore, op.cit., 1980, p. 51, fig. 21