A Satyr

Benvenuto Cellini

National Gallery of Art

A muscular man stands with one hand on a walking stick and the other braced on the underside of a stone block above his head in this full-length, vertical drawing. The man’s body faces our left in profile, but he turns his face to look up and off to the right. Short, curling horns nestle among his curly hair, and he has a curly goatee. He has a furry brow, like a goat, a flattened nose, and drooping eyes. His lips are parted, and his top eye teeth and bottom middle teeth show. His right hand, to our left, reaches up to the stone overhead. He holds his other arm across his body to brace that hand on a waist-high staff. He stands with his weight on his left foot, closer to us, and his other ankle crosses in front so the balls of that foot rest on the ground. A rectangular frame is drawn with brown ink, and the corners are shaded sage green. More drawn frames suggest stepped molding within a frosty green band. Cursive text in the lower right corner reads, “alla porta di fontana Bellio di bronzo p piu di dua volte il vivo b 7 erano dua variati.”