Description:
Figure of a nude male, reaching down
Label Text:
Despite the stigma often attached to the word “copy,” this form of drawing is an established and legitimate subset of artistic practice. Copies which creatively emulate the work of other artists can offer valuable insight into the artistic priorities, influences, and thought processes of the copyist and his time. Sebastiano Conca was a central figure in Italian late Baroque painting who enjoyed widespread acclaim during his lifetime for his portraits and religious paintings. Here, he copied one of a multitude of figures from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, painted more than a century and a half earlier. The contorted, mid-action pose would appeal to a Baroque artist’s love of movement, offering Conca a chance to emulate the methods of this renowned Renaissance master.
The inscription on the recto and the collector’s mark on the verso show that this drawing once belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the distinguished founder of the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1768. Being a great admirer of the earlier artist’s work, it is hardly surprising that Reynolds should make a copy after Michelangelo. What is surprising is the fact that the drawing has an attribution to a specific and rather well-known artist as well as a confirmed provenance to a prominent collector. It is rare to find indications of either authorship or provenance on copies, much less both on the same sheet, because they were often intended solely for the personal use of the artist. Reynolds and Conca, however, were contemporaries, giving credence to the attribution of the original author of this study.
(K.A.B. 2007)
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1984.13.3 |
