Youth with a Cloak over His Left Shoulder and a Separate Study of His Head and Back
Early XVII century.Not on display
In spite of the superficial similarity of the pen-work to that of Passerrotti, this drawing is in fact by an early seven-teenth-century Florentine hand. The kneeling youth appears, with differences, in the left foreground of the altarpiece of Christ´s Entry into Jerusalem in S. Croce, Florence, which Cosimo and Ristoro Serristori had commissioned Cigoli to paint in 1604, shortly before the painter´s departure for Rome. In the painting, the youth holds up in his left hand the corner of a red cloth, over which Christ rides on a donkey through a gateway into Jerusalem, while extending forwards his right hand in a welcoming gesture. Unlike the figure in the Prado drawing, the youth in the painting has long, curly hair and leggings cover his right calf. Omitted from the drawing is the youth´s raised left hand, since its place was presumably taken by the secondary study for the head and shoulders in the top right.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.186
