Head of an Old Man in Profile to the Right

Attributed to: Meester van de Pala Sforzesca (in circa 1495)

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Specifications

Title	Head of an Old Man in Profile to the Right
Material and technique	Red chalk
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 128 mm Width 90 mm
Artists	Attributed to: Meester van de Pala Sforzesca Follower of: Leonardo da Vinci Previously attributed: Francesco Melzi Maker: Anoniem
Accession number	I 464 (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1495
Watermark	undeterminable through the sheet (vV, 4P)
Inscriptions	'Leonard' (verso, above right, pen and ink), '[...]rtus de Jouffier Grand / Chambellan de France / Roy de France. / Lionardo da Vinci.' (on fragment of removed backing shee, above right, pen and brown ink)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Mark	F.W. Koenigs (L.1023a on removed backing sheet)
Provenance	Chevalier Wicar; Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830, L.2445 deest), London; art dealer Samuel Woodburn (1781-1853, L.2584), acquired with the Lawrence Collection in 1834, cat. London 1836a, no. 60; (?) Willem II, King of the Netherlands; his sale, The Hague (De Vries, Roos, Brondgeest) 12.08.1850, lot #261-264; - ; Art dealer Julius W. Böhler (1883-1966), Lucerne; Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1929 (Francesco Melzi); D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Exhibitions	Rotterdam 1997-98; Rotterdam 2010 (coll 2 kw 7); Rotterdam (Rondom Fra B.) 2016; Haarlem 2018, no. 50
Internal exhibitions	Rondom Raphaël (1997) De Collectie Twee - wissel VII, Prenten & Tekeningen (2010) Rondom Fra Bartolommeo (2016)
External exhibitions	Leonardo. Expressie en Emotie (2018)
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Von Ritgen 1865, p. 2, plate 8; Kwakkelstein 1994, ill. 105 (anonymous follower); Kwakkelstein 1997, pp. 197-198, ill. 2 (after Leonardo); Haarlem 2018, no. 51 (attributed to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi).
Material	Red chalk > Chalk > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Geographical origin	Italy > Southern Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Michael Kwakkelstein

The present drawing illustrates a male head identical to the type of head depicted in a group of eight metalpoint drawings that have been attributed to an anonymous Lombard painter active in Milan during the 1490s and generally referred to as the Maestro della Pala Sforzesca.^[1]During the seventeenth century, some of these drawings were regarded as portraits of Artus Gouffier, Lord of Boisy (1475-1519), the French diplomat and chamberlain to King Francis I (1494-1547).^[2] Instead, the face of the balding elderly man illustrated in these drawings bears a striking resemblance to the likenesses of the architect Donato Bramante (1444-1514).^[3]

Since the metalpoint drawings portray the sitter viewed from different angles, but with the same sorrowful expression and folds of skin hanging down under the chin as in the Rotterdam drawing, it has been argued that they were made from a portrait Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had modelled in clay.^[4]The drawings, including the present one, were probably made as an exercise in drawing after sculpture.^[5] This would explain the way such anatomical details as the slack folds of skin in the neck were used to suggest volume through the interplay of light and shadow. According to a contemporary source, the heads of the apostles in Leonardo’s The Last Supper were based on portraits the artist had drawn of several members of the Sforza court and Milanese men of ‘true stature’.^[6]The fact that Leonardo adopted the physiognomic type illustrated in the Rotterdam drawing for the balding and bearded head of the figure of Andrew in The Last Supper, suggests that his features may well reflect those of Bramante.^[7]

Stylistically, the Rotterdam drawing is close to the drawings by the Maestro della Pala Sforzesca. In addition to his depictions of the same head type, the Lombard artist’s rendering of a young woman’s long curly hair in a drawing in Milan is nearly identical to that of the man illustrated in the present drawing.^[8]

Footnotes

^[1]See Marani in: Bora/Fiorio/Marani 1998 et al., pp. 179-98. For the group of eight drawings, see Kwakkelstein 2014, pp. 193-95, figs. 103-11.

^[2]Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-1714) was the first to assert that a drawing he owned, which is now in the Uffizi (inv. 424 E), was a portrait of Gouffier that he believed Leonardo had drawn in December 1515 in Bologna during a meeting between the King of France and Pope Leo X. However, Resta’s identification is untenable as Gouffier died in 1519 at the age of 44, while portraits of him show a very different person altogether. See Kwakkelstein 1997.

^[3]For examples of contemporary ‘portraits’ of Bramante, see Wood 2011, vol. 1, pp. 120-23 (under no. 170) and vol. 2, figs. 22-23.

^[4]Kwakkelstein 2014, pp. 105-12.

^[5]Ibidem.

^[6]For Antonio de Beatis’s account of the visit of Cardinal Louis of Aragon to The Last Supper, see Pedretti in: Washington 1983, p. 145 (under 1517).

^[7]Given the damaged state of Leonardo’s The Last Supper, the comparison here is based on Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli’s copy after it (c.1515) in the Royal Academy, London (On loan to Magdalen College, Oxford). See London 2011, no. 84 (third apostle from the left).

^[8]The drawing is illustrated in: Milan 1987, no. 10 (‘Bust of a young woman wearing a double pearl necklace’).

Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600

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