A Kneeling Youth with His Hands Bound

A capuchin monk dedicated exclusively to religious works, Fra Semplice brought the fluid paint handling of Domenico Fetti and something of the regularized construction and rhetoric of the Bolognese school to the early 17th-century Veronese formulation. His drawings, typically figure studies in chalks on blue paper, similarly qualify 16th-Venetian usage, affording pronounced color, compact form, and succinct design. Reminiscent of drawings by the Bassano family, a bit cautious in the description of surface, this is probably an early study.