Complete Checklist

Among Andrea's earliest surviving drawings, this sheet relates to the Healing of the Relics of San Filippo Benizi fresco at SS. Annunziata. Parallel hatching models the face, and similar handling renders a hand holding a rope or other slim object, with zigzags of chalk blocking in areas of shadow. The seemingly random marks behind the child's ear indicate the spot in the painting where the mother cradles the child's head with her hand. Though the child seems to gaze at the hand in the drawing, the two details appear at opposite sides of the fresco.

Andrea studied Morelli from life to prepare his portrait in the altarpiece the silk merchant commissioned of the Archangel Raphael, Tobias, and St. Leonard (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Lavishing attention on the sitter's elegant profile, the artist manipulates chalk and reserves of paper to invoke his full lips, cheekbones, and light-colored eye as he looks up at the divine.

Complementing Andrea's nude figure studies, this drawing captures the volume and folds of a garment as it was probably draped on a garzone or lay figure (jointed wood mannequin) in the studio. It is related to figures in two works dated about five years apart: the Arrest of the Baptist fresco at the Chiostro dello Scalzo and a Transfiguration scene embroidered on an ecclesiastical vestment (Museo Diocesano, Cortona).

Although this work was long believed to be a self-portrait, the sitter's identity remains uncertain. Scholars have debated the object he holds as the key to his identity, suggesting it is a block of clay or marble (possibly indicating a sculptor), a brick, or a book. Related drawings (Study of a Young Man and Study of a Young Man) show the sitter holding the latter. A common attribute for Renaissance sitters with intellectual and humanist interests, the book may not bring us any closer to who he is. Andrea declares his own identity as the portrait's creator: at left, he includes his monogram, two interlocking As for Andrea d'Agnolo.

Lauded as one of Andrea's most beautiful drawings, this study of a seated woman holding a book features soft handling of chalk at her face that is markedly different from the bold strokes demarcating her costume and hands, which are almost schematic. Blocks of shadow and framing lines visible on three sides show the artist working out the composition of a portrait. The drawing has been identified as a portrait of the artist's wife, relating to a fragmentary portrait in Berlin cropped above her voluminous sleeves.

The drawings on the recto and verso of this sheet and another of the same title trace Andrea's development of the twisting figure, which reaches its fullest expression in his Portrait of a Young Man. Here, he experimented with the figure looking over his shoulder to the right, resting his elbow on an upright book.

This drawing prepares the eloquent classical profile of the central figure in Andrea's monumental fresco The Tribute to Caesar (Villa Medici, Poggio a Caiano). The artist exploits the effects of red chalk to produce crisp, saturated contours, subtle tones, and fine detail, resulting in one of the most impressive and refined drawings of his surviving corpus.

In sharp contrast to the playful youth on the opposite side of this sheet, this drawing — whose powerful schematic quality mirrors the finality of its subject — prepares a decoration for a tomb. Whether the skull and bone or the children were drawn first is unknown. In Andrea’s workshop, as in any other, paper was valuable, and artists frequently used both sides.

This sheet (along with Studies of a Child ) studies putti for the Assumption painted for the Panciatichi family. Beginning with the drawing on this sheet, Andrea explores a combination of strength and levity for the putto intended to support the ascending Virgin. Continuing to study the child, he arrives at the solution in Studies of a Child — raising the arm high, rotating the hips to the right, and emphasizing his round bottom — then adds studies of another child turning away. Combining chalks showcases their possibilities: black chalk presents a stronger contrast with paper and thus more intense light and dark; red, a wider range of tonal effects.

Drawn from a live model (probably one of his garzoni), this sheet prepares the angel at right in The Madonna of the Steps. The mostly nude figure is clothed in the painting with his sleeve rolled into a large bunch at his elbow, and this is anticipated by the study of an arm with a cuffed sleeve. Effects of light and shadow on his muscular back are achieved through rubbing and wetting the chalk, and in quick strokes Andrea renders the figure's right hand resting atop a sack, a stand-in for the lamb that Andrea initially planned for the angel's attribute.

This sheet relates to the head of the angel in The Madonna of the Steps. Several strokes of chalk explore the curve of the figure's chin and bump of his Adam's apple as he extends his neck to look upward and slightly to his right, with parted lips. The drawing represents the particular challenge of creating an expressive profile in a figure turned away from the viewer.

In preparing the figure of the kneeling Virgin in The Madonna of the Steps, Andrea uses a combination of short and long hatching lines to render the folds and fall of garments as they bunch around the lower body and tumble forward and down the steps. The blank vertical field just left of the knee is a placeholder for the leg of the Christ child, which occupies this spot in the painting.

This head study prepares the face of the Christ child at the center of The Madonna of the Steps and features a subsidiary drawing focused on his slightly more puckered lips. The child's smooth flesh and rosy, plump cheeks are achieved by stumping (rubbing with an instrument) and applying a wetted brush over chalk hatching.

This sensuous depiction of the luminous, handsome young saint was commissioned by a wealthy Florentine banker for display in his home. John's muscular body recalls that of Michelangelo's David. Standing in a rocky outcropping with his attributes of reed cross, camel skin, baptismal bowl, and proclamatory scroll held closed in his hand, he looks up to the source of divine radiance, enacting his role (as declared in the Gospel of John) as witness to the light of Christ.

Drawn from life when Andrea and his family fled Florence's plague for a monastery in the Mugello, this study for the Luco Pietà (an altarpiece now at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, that he produced for the nuns who hosted him) prepares the head of Mary Magdalene. Her downcast eyes communicate her repentance as a reformed prostitute and her lament over the dead Christ, whose body she looks upon in the painting. Delicate strokes of chalk render the falling hair that had dried the feet of Christ after she washed them with her tears.

These five studies for The Madonna of the Sack lunette in SS. Annunziata in Florence (one of Andrea's best known and lauded works) provide rare insight into the early stages of the artist's creative process. Moving quickly across the sheet, perhaps only in a matter of minutes, Andrea explores different arrangements of the Virgin and Child, from the Virgin standing, at top left, to sitting and nursing the Christ child at bottom right. His diverse handling of chalk — including faint strokes and reworked, stressed contours — echoes his experimental approach to the composition.

This unusual study focuses on a child's hair and almost completely neglects the face, save for circles and dashes for eyes, nose, and mouth. Perhaps more finished head studies, like the Head of an Infant in Profile to the Right, were accompanied by sheets like this, which offer alternative solutions for specific details. This drawing has not been securely related to a known painting. It might be an exercise in studying hair, without preparing a specific project, but it is blackened (strangely, on both sides), which suggests it was transferred to another surface.

In this study for a disciple in Andrea's Last Supper in the refectory of the church of San Salvi, the artist indulges in his model's expressive physiognomy. Wisps of hair seem to fly from his scalp and chin, while judicious reserves (areas of untouched paper) emphasize his sunken cheeks and tightened muscles at the forehead and temple. In a second sketch of the eye area, Andrea experiments with a curling eyebrow and long, straight lashes, accentuating the figure's concentrated gaze at the drama unfolding at Christ's table.

This sheet (along with Studies of Children) studies putti for the Assumption painted for the Panciatichi family. Beginning with the drawing on Studies of Children, Andrea explores a combination of strength and levity for the putto intended to support the ascending Virgin. Continuing to study the child, he arrives at the solution in this sheet — raising the arm high, rotating the hips to the right, and emphasizing his round bottom — then adds studies of another child turning away. Combining chalks showcases their possibilities: black chalk presents a stronger contrast with paper and thus more intense light and dark; red, a wider range of tonal effects.

An exemplary study from life, this sheet vividly captures the right arm of a model (probably a garzone) for a disciple in Andrea's Last Supper in the refectory in the church of San Salvi. He grips the bench he sits on and leans forward over the table at which Christ and his disciples dine. Andrea's sensitive rendering of the arm and hand using a combination of chalk effects contrasts with the sketchy (though no less evocative) midsection rendered in swift strokes, including the detail of the swelling at the groin.

The subtlety of the reflected light at the chin and throat of the infant make this one of Andrea's most sensitive drawings. It probably prepared the head of the infant John the Baptist in The Holy Family with St. John (Hermitage, St. Petersburg). Andrea reused the design in two other paintings: the Borgherini Holy Family at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Charity at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This economical use of drawings was typical and underlines the importance of such highly achieved drawings in the workshop.

Andrea analyzed the mechanics of the reins and harness as much as he did the anatomy of the grazing donkey in this drawing, which he used for the later two of three known versions of the Sacrifice of Isaac. A testament to Andrea's intense preparation for his paintings, it is the second design he produced for an animal that appears in the scene's background, partially blocked from view.

With quick strokes and remarkable economy of line, Andrea worked out the complex configuration of ten figures on this small sheet, a study for the Sarzana altarpiece, formerly in Berlin (destroyed during World War II). Scribbles describe details like St. Onophrius's loincloth of leaves (at far left) while a series of ovals marks his consideration of the head of the Christ child (at center). Swift lines falling from the Virgin's head emphasize her as the apex of a pyramidal figural composition, a Renaissance convention.

The theatrical pose of this full-length figure almost exactly matches (but in reverse) that of St. Michael in Andrea's altarpiece for the abbey of Vallombrosa (Uffizi, Florence). While the painted saint wears all'antica armor, here the figure dons clothing typical of the 1520s, including a plumed headdress. After studying the figure (probably a studio assistant), Andrea reconsidered the composition: framing lines transform it into a design for a half-length figure, perhaps a portrait.