This remarkable drawing offers a rare and striking testimony to the fascination exerted by Michelangelo’s David on the generation of Florentine artists who followed him. Executed in pen and brown ink and attributed to the sculptor Vincenzo de’ Rossi (1525–1587), a pupil of Baccio Bandinelli, the sheet studies the celebrated marble from behind, transforming Michelangelo’s monumental figure through a distinctly sculptural use of line and hatching.
Rather than simply copying the statue, the artist concentrates on its three-dimensional construction: the powerful articulation of the back, shoulders and legs is modelled through dense, controlled hatching, as if the pen itself were carving the body. This approach finds close parallels in drawings attributed to Rossi and reflects the intimate relationship between drawing and sculpture in his practice.
The subject is particularly compelling. Michelangelo’s David, unveiled in Florence in 1504, immediately became an object of study for the leading artists of the Renaissance; Raphael and, later, Bartolomeo Passarotti are among those known to have drawn the sculpture from similar viewpoints.
The sheet also possesses an exceptional early provenance. Its mount bears the inscription “S.F. n°73”, Scuola Fiorentina, no. 73, identifying it as formerly belonging to the celebrated collection of Zaccaria Sagredo (1653–1729), one of the great Venetian collectors of drawings. The Sagredo inventory system records S.F. numbers from 1 to 232, firmly situating the drawing within this historic collection.
Combining an iconic Michelangelesque subject, a rare sculptor’s approach to drawing and an important seventeenth-century provenance, this imposing sheet, measuring 40 × 16 cm, is a particularly evocative document of the legacy of Michelangelo in sixteenth-century Florence.