Marcello Venusti
1512-1579
Standing Draped Woman
Dimensions: 27.8 cm x 12.9 cm
Medium: red and black chalk on paper
Date Created: 1512-1579
Marcello Venusti, most known for his sanctioned copies of more famous works by Michelangelo, was himself an active painter and drawer in Rome in the mid 16th century. He was a mannerist artist, known for art that had drama and presence even if the figures or pieces represented were distorted unrealistically for the sake of it. The Standing Draped Woman is reminiscent of that unrealistic distortion, as Venusti has drawn a woman who is totally enveloped in highly styled and meticulously arrayed fabric. The woman is not particularly well defined — she has no visible legs nor torso and only the barest suggestion of arms, so lost in the folds of her robes as to be hardly distinct. The textile engulfs her totally, and yet manages to both impose an aesthetic beautify on itself and to suggest a maternal sympathy while it does so. As for the woman, she does not seem to be unnaturally placed in her fabric nor does she seem to feel discomfort in being wrapped in it; the fabric, which utterly obscures her body (a facet of her bodily identity) seems comfortable to her, even welcome. Venusti presents her clothing as an almost natural outgrowth of her own body, but the drapery over it literally embodies an external control of it, whether self imposed or otherwise. Crucially, Venusti presents her as content with this fabric-enforced control — or at least, not discontented by it.
