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Portrait of a Man (recto); Portrait of a Man (accidental offset) (verso)

Creator

Italian Artist · 1625–1696

Born into a prominent Florentine family, Filippo Baldinucci received a Jesuit education and hoped to pursue a religious career. Reluctantly, he abandoned his studies to work for the Medicis, becoming Leopoldo de' Medici's bookkeeper in 1664. He later became a consultant for Leopoldo's drawings collection and gallery of artists' self-portraits. After Leopoldo's death, he served under Cosimo III de'

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Date: about 1660
Medium: Red and black chalk
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 0a78e0bd-99b0-43be-9aa3-9bb66e79c83f

From the Getty Museum record

For years, the most distinguished Florentine noblemen, scholars, and artists assembled at the Marchese Valori's country villa outside Florence every summer. There Filippo Baldinucci displayed his considerable amateur artistic talents. "[A]lmost every day he was condemned to make a portrait from life of one of his gentlemen companions, in black and red chalk, choosing by lots each day the one to be portrayed," wrote his son. Baldinucci drew his friends' portraits, all in roughly the same format, and gave them to his renowned host, who hung them in his villa. After Valori's death, the collection remained intact, becoming part of the Uffizi Gallery's collection in 1866. Baldinucci also made duplicates for his own collection. These duplicate drawings, unbound from the book in which he collected them, were dispersed at London sales in the 1760s. Scholars are uncertain about the identity of this sitter. The verso displays an accidental offset from another portrait drawing, most likely by Baldinucci, which suggests that this drawing probably came from his book of duplicates. The residue of a tinted edge along the right side of the paper and traces of stitch holes at the left also demonstrate that the sheet was once part of a sketchbook or album.

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