Vincenzo Tamagni (San Gimignano 1492-circa 1530)

Tamagni was an eccentric draughtsman and his sheets of mutiple figure studies are among his most lively works. He was especially skilled at depicting the interaction between two figures, as if they were speaking, or engaged in a moment of emotional intimacy. The recto of this sheet shows two figures facing each other, gesturing and making eye contact. A subsidiary study of a seated woman gazing up at an approaching man evokes a similar sense of immediacy in both execution and tone. The verso also shows a seated woman looking at a standing figure, while an infant at her breast clamors for attention. A comparable double-sided drawing is in the Biblioteca Reale in Turin (Rust, op. cit., pp. 91-2, figs. 18, 19).