CARNEVALE, Fra
(b. ca. 1425, Urbino, d. 1484, Urbino)

Study of David and Two Figures

1450s
Drawing
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

By the mid-fifteenth century it had become standard workshop practice in Florence to work from posed models; for the most part they were young, male studio assistants (garzoni), although studies of females are also occasionally encountered. Those drawings that survived are either in pen and ink with brown wash on white paper and have a predominantly linear quality, or are in the more pictorial technique of brown or gray wash heightened with white gouache on blue paper.

Presumably Fra Carnevale executed drawings in the workshop of Filippo Lippi. The central figure in the drawing in Stockholm can be identified as David with the head of Goliath. It is clearly taken from a posed model making do with a chamber pot for Goliath's head.




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