Study of a Nude Man Posed as Bacchus

Antoine Coypel created this drawing during the first years of his tenure as a professor at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. This study of a male nude, reclining slightly and gesturing with his proper right hand, demonstrates Coypel's exceptional skill at rendering the human form from life. Confident outlines in black chalk and the interplay between white heightening and black hatching describe the powerful body of a man posed as a god: the raised glass in his proper left hand suggests that this model was meant to portray Bacchus. This sheet has been linked to Coypel's 1685 commission for a ceiling decoration of the Pavillon d'Aurore at the Château de Choisy for the Duchess of Montpensier, a cousin of Louis XIV. Though the ceiling was destroyed in 1746, a composition drawing preserved at the Louvre suggests that the figure portrayed here played the role of Autumn in one of four lunettes representing the seasons. In contrast to its lofty preparatory function, the sheet's creases, stray marks, and media tests speak to its working life in the artist's studio.

Credit: Gift of Daniel Thierry