Marco Benefial

In 18th-century Rome, the corpses of executed criminals frequently served as models at the state-sponsored Academy of St. Luke and in smaller, private art schools opened by accomplished painters like Marco Benefial. Here the artist captures the stark play of light and shadow across the cadaver’s muscular shoulders and arms, as well as the clenched knuckles of the right hand, visceral evidence of a violent and painful death. Despite its morbid underpinnings, this drawing may have been a compositional study for a nobler subject, such as a dead saint or mythological hero. Benefial’s maverick concern for naturalistic depiction of the body is well
documented: in 1755, he was expelled from the Academy of St. Luke for his outspoken criticism of his colleagues’ allegedly incompetent methods of teaching life drawing.