Kneeling Nude Woman

Raphael excelled at creating exquisitely controlled life drawings in preparation for his painted compositions. This drawing belongs to one of his greatest Roman commissions: the fresco cycle in the loggia of Agostino Chigi’s villa beside the river Tiber, which was completed in 1518. Chigi was a fabulously wealthy Sienese banker, an important papal adviser, and one of Raphael’s most significant patrons. His villa was essentially a pleasure pavilion and the ceiling of the loggia was decorated with episodes from the lives of the mythic lovers, Cupid and Psyche. Raphael’s kneeling woman is related to a scene of the Toilet of Psyche, intended for one of the frescoed lunettes, but not in fact executed; its composition is, however, recorded in a later print. This shows that had the woman been painted, she would have been depicted clothed, in the attitude of a handmaiden offering a dish to Psyche who was seated to the right. The partially drawn face and hands are probably for one of the other attendants who would dress the hair of the goddess.

Red chalk was first widely used in the early sixteenth century, and could be employed to create precise, descriptive outlines and model form with great subtlety. Both effects were brought to an extraordinary pitch in this consummate study.