The two Academies of the Nude present exercises done years apart. The first, dated 1873, was the winning entry in the Istituto di Belle Arti di Siena’s annual competition and seems to have been done following the Purist dictates of naturalism and sweetness proposed by the director Luigi Mussini and his disciple Alessandro Franchi, Master of the School of Figure Studies.

The other Nude assumes a “heroic” stance, with his arm raised up to fight. The handling of the paint indicates a later date, in the 1880s, when Aldi, in Rome, was working on major paintings and attending the free courses in the Nude offered by the Accademia di San Luca.