* Adriaen van de Velde Amsterdam 1636 - 1672

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Description

Adriaen van de Velde
study of a standing male nude holding a staff
Bears inscription in brown ink, lower right: L. Da Vinci.
Red chalk

Provenance

With A. Mathews, Bournemouth, catalogue 71, Autumn 1967, cat.no. 239;
Victor D. Spark, New York, 1968;
Jacobus A. Klaver, Amsterdam (bears his mark, not in Lugt, on the backing paper), his sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 10 May 1994, lot 64

Exhibited

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tekeningen van oude Meesters. De verzameling Jacobus A. Klaver, 1993, cat.no. 64

Literature

William W. Robinson, 'Preparatory drawings by Adriaen van de Velde', Master Drawings, XVII, 1979, pp. 21-22, cat.no. D-11

Catalogue Note

Somewhat unusually for a 17th-century Dutch artist, Adriaen van de Velde's figure studies include a number of representations of the male nude, a subject that betrays the overwhelming influence on him by the art of Italy. Even the manner in which the nude figure is here depicted, sculpted with delicate modulations of light and shade and set against a schematic, hatched background, are strongly reminiscent of Italian prototypes, though not, of course, of as early a date as the author of the optimistic 18th or 19th-century attribution to 'L. Da Vinci' clearly hoped. Two comparable studies are in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam (inv.1954.107) and in Stockholm (Nationalmuseum, inv. NMH 2166/1863).

The drawing was described by Robinson (see Literature) as a preliminary study for the figure of the angel in van de Velde's 1667 painting of The Annunciation (Amsterdam, Musuem Amstelkring, on loan to the Rijksmuseum, inv.A2688), but although there is a clear facial resemblance between the two figures, they are so different in pose that the connection must remain conjectural.