These mature oil sketches, dating to the late 1750s, mark an exciting addition to the artist's oeuvre. Ubaldo Gandolfi's skill in capturing the effect of light on the human form is readily apparent in all three works. Painted directly from life (likely by candlelight) with great confidence of execution, the trio exemplifies the artist's practice of studying pose, gesture, and expression by working directly from nude models.

A prolific draftsman and the inheritor of Bologna's great academic tradition begun by the Carracci in the sixteenth century, Gandolfi trained at the Accademia Clementina di Pittura, Scultura, e Architettura at the Instituto delle Scienze. Between 1745 and 1749 he received three medals for figure drawing and in 1760 he was appointed Director of Drawing. Much like Ubaldo's oil sketches of posed models in the Molinari Pradelli and Petrucci collects ions, the present paintings were almost certainly conceived as autonomous works, rather than as modelli for larger compositions.¹

We are grateful to Professor Donatella Biagi Maino for endorsing the attribution to Ubaldo Gandolfi.

¹ See D. Biagi Maino, Ubalfo Gandolfi, Turin 1990, p. 255, reproduced fig. 74; D. Biagi Maino, in Arte barocca nella collezione Petrucci, Rome 2017, pp. 64-67, reproduced figs. 26, 26.1.