Giovanni Battista Naldini

Dr. Carl Robert Rudolf (1884-1974), London,

his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 4 July 1977, lot 76;

with Yvonne Tan Bunzl, London, Old Master Drawings, 1978, no. 45;

Private collection, Germany;

David Lachenmann, Zurich, 2003,

from whom acquired by Diane A. Nixon

London and elsewhere, Arts Council, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C.R. Rudolf, 1962, no. 42;

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 16 (entry by Rhoda Eitel-Porter);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 16

Born in Fiesole around 1537, Naldini entered the workshop of Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1556) in 1549. He subsequently moved to Rome, forging his own highly individual style, much influenced by the later works of Raphael (1483–1520). Returning to Florence in 1562, he was recruited by Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) to work on the decoration of the main rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio. Naldini is perhaps best-known today for his participation, alongside other leading Florentine painters of the period, in the groundbreaking decorative scheme for the studiolo of Francesco I de' Medici (1541–1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany – a project, dating from 1570–72, that has been hailed as the pinnacle of Florentine late Mannerist painting.

The present work, drawn in an energetic combination of black chalk, coupled with pen and brown ink and light-brown wash, is a fine and characteristic example of Naldini’s virtuoso draftsmanship. The elaborate recto of the sheet depicts several episodes from the early part of the story of Joseph, taken from the Book of Genesis (Chapters 37-39). In the centre of the composition, the young Joseph recounts to his brothers his dream in which their sheaves of corn bowed down to his – shown in the roundel at upper left – and the sun, moon and stars also made obeisance to him. To the right of Joseph, in the middle ground, a ram is being killed for its blood, with which his brothers will smear Joseph’s coat to make their father believe that the boy’s disappearance was the result of an attack by a wild beast. Finally, to the upper right, Joseph is being lowered into the well. The two figures in the left foreground may perhaps be identified as the distraught figure of Joseph’s father Jacob, inconsolable at his son’s apparent death, and his youngest son Benjamin, who comforts him. As Rhoda Eitel-Porter suggested (see Exhibited), the recumbent figure lower right and his child-like companion may be an alternative design for the Jacob and Benjamin group.

In contrast to the recto, the verso of the Nixon drawing presents a more sculptural, densely worked figure study in black chalk. The pose of the central male figure, who is depicted nude, supported by a second figure, alludes in certain respects to the subject of the Deposition. Through this handsome sheet we see so many facets of Naldini’s skill as a draftsman, but despite the elaborate and distinctive compositional nature of the recto this drawing has not so far been connected with a known painting by the artist.