Seated Male Nude (1693–95): Art, History and Details

Seated Male Nude (1693–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Claude Gillot (French, 1673–1722).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Michelangelo’s masterful rendering of the male nude set the standard for many generations of artists studying in academies across Europe. Life drawings (made from nude models) became so essential to an artist’s training at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris (founded in 1648 by Louis XIV) that finished drawings like these were commonly called academies. Louis de Boullogne served as a professor of life drawing at the Royal Academy between 1694 and 1715. This work reflects the common practice of drawing from models. Here, the pose of the red chalk academie by Claude Gillot is reminiscent of the twisting male bodies on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Gillot may have seen prints or drawings of Michelangelo’s figures, though his model is more visually connected to the studio: for example, he drew the model’s stone perch as well as the drape tucked beneath his body.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Male Nude
• Date: 1693–95
• Creator attribution: Claude Gillot (French, 1673–1722)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: red chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 43.1 x 28.6 cm (16 15/16 x 11 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.353

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.