Abstract
Abstract In a book entitled The Subject in Painting, Daniel Arasse highlighted the anomalies and gaps likely to contain the “marks of the personality of their author” in works by Mantegna, Piero di Cosimo, Bellini, and Titian. He intended to show “how in the subject of a work the subject who painted it shines through.” This particular study is done in the footsteps of Arasse, but instead of starting from a completed work I will consider a preparatory drawing by the Florentine painter Cristofano Allori (1577–1621) as a point of departure. The challenge of this article is, thus, to show that the research methods specific to drawing employed to put in place a “subject-theme” can indeed refer to the “subject-artist” and even contain him or her: Allori studies his subject while “revealing himself” as a subject, and in this case his personal story is one of a tumultuous and passionate relationship with his mistress, La Mazzafirra.
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