AGOSTINO CARRACCI | Study of a standing bearded male nude seen from behind, his right arm extended

Sale, Paris, Thierry de Maigret, 8 December 2006, lot 66 (as Italian 17th Century);
with Jean-Luc Baroni, London,
from whom acquired by the present owner

Laid down on an old piece of paper and window mounted. Some slight traces of glue along the left margin. Few very light brown-grey tiny stains scattered. Overall in good condition and medium strong. Sold mounted but not framed.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This bold image of a nude, seen from behind, executed with flamboyant energy and sinuous contours, is remarkably close to our modern sensibility in its strength and directness.  The vigorous and reassured handling of the pen and ink, combined with rhythmic parallel hatching to suggest areas of shadow, is, however, very typical of Agostino Carracci's late pen style, of around 1600.  During the final years of his relatively short life, Agostino’s style became ever freer and more experimental, yet ever more refined in the handling of the pen. Agostino spent the last two years of his life in Parma, probably at the invitation of Odoardo Farnese, who commissioned from him the frescoes in the Palazzo del Giardino.  The artist had already travelled to Parma in the 1580s, but this later visit seemed to reawaken in him an appreciation of the works of the Emilian mannerists.  Elongated torsos, limbs, and others parallels with the work of Parmigianino are clear in many of the preparatory drawings of Agostino's late years.  This drawing, like lot 314, relates stylistically to a series of pen and ink studies executed by Agostino in preparation for his famous last print, the Saint Jerome of circa 1602.¹  The handling and technique of the present nude is also very close to the studies related to the frescoes for Palazzo del Giardino, executed between 1600 and 1602, such as the Figure Studies for the story of Peleus and Thetis, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.²

Especially bold and vigorous in its execution, this handsome sheet exemplifies Agostino's reassured handling of the pen and ink, when late in life he was still constantly reinventing and developing his graphic style. 

^1. D. DeGrazia Bohlin, Prints and Related Drawings by the Carracci Family: A catalogue Raisonné, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1979, no. 213, pp. 346-351, reproduced

^2. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 1972.133.1; reproduced, J. Bean, 17^th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1979, no. 93, fig. 93 recto