Study of male nudes in motion

The sculptural work of I. F. Platzer, a distinguished and remarkably prolific sculptor of the Late Baroque period in Bohemia, was continually accompanied by drawing. The numerous sketches and designs attest to the artist being a talented draughtsman, who produced innumerable studies of movement and many versions of different motifs. The National Gallery in Prague possesses a unique collection of about three hundred drawings from the estate of the Platzer sculptural workshop that reflects the development and various facets of Platzer’s distinctive style and the stylistic shift in the output of his followers. This fairly small sheet showing a series of male nudes represents Platzer as a confident draughtsman, who playfully tried his hand at a variety of stances and movements. The drawing tends to be associated with the statue of Hercules, fashioned by Platzer for Czernin Palace in Prague in 1746.