Belvedere Torso

The third and final Bargue Drawing for students at the Florence Academy is one of two different views of the Belvedere Torso. A well known fragment of an unidentified sculpture from antiquity, the Belvedere torso copying exercise is infamous in its own right at the Florence Academy. Completing the torso requires mastery of a variety of conceptual and technical tools used in drawing. Observe, for instance, the variety of shadows involved in the torso: cast shadow, form turning away from the light, planes in a variety of relationships to the light source, reflections within larger shadow shapes, and combinations of all of the above. Each type of shadow requires a different kind of description and different types of charcoal handling. So, here’s to this rite of passage! Now I get to move on to cast drawings… coming up soon.

18″x26″ Charcoal on Roma Paper, Copy from Original Cast Drawing by Charles Bargue