The son of a painter from the town of Arpino, Giuseppe Cesari worked mostly in Rome, apart from two brief stays in Naples. A precocious artist, he arrived in Rome in 1582 at the age of fourteen, and was soon working at the Vatican logge under the direction of Niccolo Circignani, called il Pomarancio. During his long career, Arpino would receive significant commissions from three different Popes. While still quite young, he undertook the decoration of rooms in the Vatican and the Palazzo del Quirinale for Pope Gregory XIII. Among other important early projects were the decoration of the Olgiati chapel in Santa Prassede, painted between 1587 and 1595, and the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, completed in 1593. In the early 1590’s Arpino also worked in Naples, where he decorated the choir and sacristy of the Certosa di San Martino, assisted by his brother Bernardino. With the accession to the papal throne of Clement VIII in 1592, Arpino became the principal painter to the Pope, who bestowed on the artist the title of Cavaliere di Cristo. He worked for Clement VIII at San Giovanni in Laterano between 1599 and 1600 and designed some seventy large cartoons for the mosaics for the dome of St. Peter’s, executed between 1603 and 1612. He also worked extensively for the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, culminating in the fresco decoration of the Palazzo dei Conservatori with scenes from ancient Roman history; a project on which he was to work, off and on, for the remainder of his career. By the turn of the century, Arpino enjoyed a reputation as one of the leading painters in Italy, and served three terms as principe of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. For the next pope, Paul V, he was tasked with supervising the decoration of the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore, on which he worked between 1610 and 1612. Apart from his many mural projects, Arpino also produced small-scale cabinet pictures for private patrons, usually of mythological subjects and often on supports such as copper, slate or glass. Among Arpino’s pupils was the young Caravaggio, who worked with him in the early 1590’s.

Cavaliere d’Arpino’s modern reputation rests more on his drawings than his paintings. As a draughtsman, he favoured red or black chalk, or a combination of the two, and his studies are characterized by a delicate yet assured line and an interest in effects of light and shade, achieved through parallel and crosshatched chalk strokes. This splendid sheet is an exceptional example of Arpino’s confident draughtsmanship. Unrelated to any surviving painting by the artist, it has the appearance of an academy drawing, using models posed in the studio. Arpino drew a large number of studies of male nudes throughout his career, some of which were used in his paintings, while others seem to have been made as independent exercises. The posing of a model on a block is found in several other drawings by the artist, such as a red chalk study of a seated prophet in the British Museum (1) and a drawing in red and black chalk of a Warrior Martyr in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh (2).

The nude in this drawing may have been inspired by the seated male nudes, or ignudi, painted by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which are similarly depicted as powerful bodies in contrapposto poses. As a repertory of the nude male form in various attitudes, Michelangelo’s ignudi were a source of inspiration for many young artists in Rome.

Notes

1. Herwarth Röttgen, Il Cavalier d’Arpino, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1973, p.151, no.83, fig.83; J. A. Gere and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Artists Working in Rome c.1550-c.1640, London, 1983, Vol.I, p.30, no.20, Vol.II, pl.20; Herwarth Röttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari D’Arpino: Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell’incostanza della fortuna, Rome, 2002, p.252, fig.29e, under no.29. The drawing served as a preparatory study for a figure on the vault of the Contarelli chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, painted by Arpino between 1591 and 1593.

2. Keith Andrews, National Gallery of Scotland: Catalogue of Italian Drawings, Cambridge, 1968, Vol.I, p.38, no.D 3087, Vol.II, p.51, fig.288 (as Ascribed to Giuseppe Cesari).