A youth standing

A photograph of a drawing depicting a nude youth standing and a study for a kneeling leg now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 57 recto). This drawing presents on the verso a study from a Massacre of the Innocents (see RCIN 854643 for a photograph of the verso).

The Gallerie dell'Accademia (see Bibliographic References) associated the drawing of the young man to examples by Perugino (without identifying a precise source for it), such as the Apollo in the Apollo and Marsyas by Perugino (now in the Louvre, inv,. no. RF 370). The study for the kneeling leg derives from the St Jerome by Perugino (now in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia) and it was later used by Raphael in the Mond Crucifixion (now in the National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG3943; see 850479 for a photograph of the painting).

This drawing is part of the so-called "Libretto di Raffaello" or "Libretto Veneziano", 53 sheets that used to be mounted in a volume. After complicated negotiations, the sketchbook was bought by the museum in the 1820s, after the death of Giuseppe Bossi, who was its previous owner. A number of scholars debated the author of the drawings (with many names proposed, such as Pinturicchio, Antonio da Viterbo, Eusebio del Giorgio, Girolamo Genga) and their date. In 1984, the Gallerie dell'Accademia catalogued the drawings as by an artist contemporary to Raphael, whose juvenile works he copied in this sketchbook (see Bibliographic References).

A copy of this photograph (RCIN 854265) can be found in the Prince Consort's Raphael Collection, portfolio 47 (970607)