Lower Level South Gallery

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).

This sheet, probably studied from life after one of Andrea's garzoni, prepares one of almost two dozen figures in his monumental fresco The Tribute to Caesar. Strokes articulating his upper back are considerably more nuanced than the broader hatchings below. That he omits the left forearm and leaves the feet as stumps suggests that the drawing follows a full compositional design, for in the fresco these areas are not visible. The sketch at left explores putting a cap on the head, which the artist ultimately rejected.

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.

Though it prepares a heavily draped, bare-headed apostle in the Assumption Andrea painted for the Panciatichi family (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), this drawing features a model (probably a studio assistant, or garzone) mostly nude and wearing a cap. Andrea articulates his muscular back with short, subtle marks while ignoring his left hand and foot and summarily blocking in the face. The connection to the face sketched in black chalk at right is unclear, although it, like the kneeling figure in the painting, turns to look at the viewer.

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.

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.

Andrea uses squiggles of black chalk to render the weathered face of his model for the sleeping St. Joseph in the Bracci Holy Family (Palazzo Pitti, Florence). The study almost certainly follows a design for the overall composition, for Andrea leaves unarticulated the lower section of the face, which in the painting is blocked from view by his arm. The red chalk may have been added by a later hand; only this sheet and the Head of a Man Looking Up feature the atypical combination of chalks in a single figure.

The chalk is applied confidently in this study for St. Joseph in Andrea's Holy Family with St. John the Baptist, a composition known in several copies (the autograph version is most likely in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg). The model's hair frames his upturned face like a mane, and varied handling conveys the difference between the texture of the hair on his head and in his beard.

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.

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.