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Two Studies of a Reclining Female Nude

Creator

Italian Artist · 1560–1635

Like many family-trained artists, Domenico Tintoretto began his career by helping his renowned father, Jacopo Tintoretto, in his Venice workshop. In 1576, when Domenico was seventeen years old, he was admitted to the Venetian painters' guild. One of his first assignments outside the workshop included assisting his father with a commission to execute paintings in the Doge's Palace. Domenico then re

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Date: 1590–1610
Medium: Black chalk heightened with white chalk
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 04512a2a-1ea3-46de-a14d-570bd9bb6ac8

From the Getty Museum record

Resting her head on her hand, a voluptuous woman stretches across the sheet and displays the rounded curves of her nude body. In this quick sketch, Domenico Tintoretto conveyed the model's languorous repose as she relaxes, head thrown back and legs outstretched. The artist focused on the central part of her body in the upper right corner. His confident strokes of black chalk define the sensuous curves of her body, while quickly-drawn white chalk lines add texture and substance to her form. In this sketch, Tintoretto also explored different ways to position his model on paper. This is most visible in her face, where the outlines of two poses overlap. Tintoretto probably made this sketch for future use in a mythological composition, as both the woman's pose and form resemble the figure of the goddess Venus in contemporary Venetian artworks. But the artist's will, which mentions "150 studies from nature after men and 50 after women," reveals his general fascination with the human figure.

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