Nude Male Torso

Sculptural fragments such as this antique male torso appear in Moroni’s Alessandro Vittoria and The Man in Pink. In The Man in Pink, the fallen sculpture appears to be allegorical, while in Alessandro Vittoria, it seems to be simply an object in the sculptor’s studio. Throughout the Renaissance, fragments like this were studied and collected by artists who used them as points of departure for figural invention. This may be a Roman reproduction of a fourth-century BCE Greek model and, as the interventions visible on its surface attest, was no doubt used and displayed in various ways during its history.