Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano

This very attractive drawing, undoubtedly made from a model posed in the studio, is a study, with differences, for the winged figure of Sleep in the fresco of Vigilance and Sleep (fig. 1) which Volterrano painted in the mid 1640s on the ceiling of the Stanza della Guardia in the Villa Medicea di Castello outside Florence.  It was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici (1599-1648), younger son of Grand Duke Ferdinando I.

The subject of the fresco is appropriate for a guardroom.  Sleep lies among clouds while a putto holds a poppy under his nose. Above, Vigilance stands alert with a candle and a heron.  The pose of Sleep seems to have been inspired by that of the famous antique sculpture known as the Barberini Faun, or Drunken Satyr (fig. 2), which had been discovered in Rome in 1628 (now in the Glyptothek, Munich) and which Volterrano may have known through a print published in 1642.  A drawing for the youth standing beside Vigilance is in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.¹

1. T. McGrath, 'Preparatory Drawings by Volterrano at the Fogg Art Museum', Master Drawings, vol. XLIII, no. 4, 2005, pp. 503-5, fig. 5