Aurelio Luini

We are grateful to dr. Lucia Tantardini cor confirming the attribution to Luini. The drawing will be included in the forthcoming  monography on Luini by dr. Tantardini.

A strong nude is depicted standing, facing backwards, with the left arm raised and the taut musculature. In the foreground a kneeled figure is sinking a pole into the ground, while a warrior wearing a helmet is approaching from behind. The nervous lines and the monumental and quite crowded conception of the scene allow to assign this drawing to Aurelio Luini, son of Bernardino and talented painter of the second half of the Sixteenth century in Milan. Aurelio, the forth son, stands out from his brothers Giovanni, Pietro and Evangelista, all painters, for a more varied culture, less dependent on his father's tradition. He is only two years old at his father's death and he trains outside the family workshop, during a stay in Venice where he manages to study Titian's masterpieces and the first works by Jacopo Tintoretto; these two aspects bring him to become involved with the group of the Lombard “irregulars”, masters featuring an industrious fantasy, sometimes not much prone to welcome the ornamental prescriptions made by the protagonists of the Council of Trent – at the point that Aurelio was barred for three years from practicing painting with a signed order from Charles Borromeo. In our drawing – which will inserted in a monographic research realized by Lucia Tantardini (forthcoming) –we can clearly see the references to Leonardo as well as the proximity to Giulio and Antonio Campi's style. Aurelio's style, recurring in his remarkable graphic production, is a digression in Lombardy of Tuscan Mannerism formal models, dense of expressive vigour and plastic remarks. Our drawing is datable back to around 1590.