Hermaphrodite Figure
by PONTORMO, Jacopo, Drawing
The theme of the nude figure depicted anatomically and characterized by particular twists of the body, which forms the leitmotif of Michelangelo’s figurative research, Pontormo addressed and reinterpreted in an entirely personal way in a series of extraordinary designs preparatory to cartoons which the artist executed from the beginning of the 1530s for the decoration of various rooms in the Florentine Medicean villas.
The theme of sexual ambiguity is presented in the Hermaphrodite Figure, one of the most interesting among those associated with the decorations for the loggia of the Villa di Castello.