Head of a Sleeping Man or Study for the Drunkenness of Noah

This panel shows a sleeping man with silver wavy hair, a short and curling beard and a thick moustache, reclining on a red cushion. A fur garment partly covers his bare, hairless chest. His torso, which is tilted, cropped and foreshortened, appears startlingly close to the picture plane, creating a sense of unexpected intimacy. This dramatic viewpoint is an early example of Italian Mannerism in Flemish art.

A member of a prominent family of Antwerp artists, Frans Floris was studying in Rome in 1541 where he was present for the unveiling of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, a tour de force of contorted anatomy and movement. Floris is credited with bringing ‘Romanism’ to Antwerp after his return in 1545. He soon established a thriving studio, which he organised according to the system he had seen in Italy. The workshop attracted numerous assistants, eager to learn the latest Italian styles from ‘the Flemish Raphael’. One of Floris’s innovations was the use life-size head studies of male or female sitters, which he made available for apprentices and assistants to copy and learn from. The present panel is considered an outstanding example of this new genre of workshop model, which would not have been intended for sale. The distinctive angle of the head identifies it as a study for a larger painting, now known only from copies, of The Drunkenness of Noah. Described in the first book of the Old Testament (Genesis 9:20–23), this episode recounts an undignified episode in Noah’s old age, when his sons found him naked and inebriated on his own wine.

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