Untitled. Studies for a Salome dancing before Herod: Christ and the Magdalen(?): a Crucifixion: a...

At a time when Florentine painting was moving away from Mannerism towards a more naturalistic style, Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612) patiently worked his way up to become an eminent decorative fresco painter. The young Poccetti painted grotesques, then facades, and later expertly designed his frescoes to integrate painting, sculpture and architecture. Warm, vivid pastel colors characterise his frescoes, while his few paintings on canvas show strong contrasts of light and dark.
Poccetti produced realistic, legible compositions with stylised figures, which were favored by private patrons. Church and corporate patrons, including the monks of Florence and Siena, found his dramatic and easily comprehensible narratives suitable to their aims of promoting piety and the Florentine saints.

These disparate studies are on the verso of Poccetti's <em>Christ driving out the money changers</em>. They comprise the four different themes of the title. Stylistically the drawings may be compared to a drawing of a bishop in the Uffizi, Florence (P. C. Hamilton, <em>Desgni di Bernardo Poccetti</em>, Florence, 1980, no. 36, pl. 40) which is dated 1591- 1592. The inscribed verse, which is difficult to decipher accurately, appears to be autograph on comparison with a drawing of the <em>Last Supper</em> (Hamilton, no. 40) which has the names of the disciples listed in the artist's hand.