Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo
Milan 1538 – 1592
Study of a man, walking to the left
Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white gouache on blue paper.
Inscribed N°5 upper right and 3/3 on the right edge.
251 x 156 mm – 9,88 x 6,14 in.
Similar in spirit and technique to various studies by the 16th century Lombard artist and art theoretician Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, this drawing particularly reminds of a sheet in the Metropolitan Museum.
Pannegiatura or drapery study was practiced in order to describe its shape, the volume underneath, and the way it was animated by light. The artist may have used a manikin, one of these « figure di legno, di terra, di cera, con li panni i lumi suoi » Lomazzo describes in Chapter 14 of his Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (1584), dedicated to the ways to show natural proportions following the eye vision. Lomazzo passed on this technique to his pupil Ambrogio Figino who also executed such drapery studies on blue paper.
Condition report – Good general condition. False margins, slight crease in the paper lower left, one small stain.
