Head of a Bearded Man in Profile Facing Right

Author: Rosie Razzall

This previously unpublished portrait of a bearded man in profile is drawn in at least six different colours of chalk: black, white, brown, pink, red and ochre. In sixteenth-century Italy there were principally two artists known for their experiments with drawing in coloured chalks, Federico Barocci (1535-1612) who worked in Urbino, and Jacopo Bassano (c.1510-1592) who was based in Bassano del Grappa near Venice. Unsurprisingly, this drawing has previously been attributed to both artists, though a certain attribution to either of them, or to an artist in one of their circles, remains open for debate.

A twentieth-century inscription on the verso, where a bearded man’s face looking upwards can just be made out in red and black chalk, confirms that the drawing was once attributed to Barocci. Comparison with other drawings of bearded men by this artist, such as those at Windsor,^[1] however, shows that Barocci rarely drew his faces in full profile, preferring a three-quarters view. Barocci also tended to draw the entirety of the face with light coloured chalks, while details of the hair and top of the head disappeared into a hatched background. The head on the Rotterdam sheet, however, is isolated on the page without any surrounding hatching, the use of lighter coloured chalks is more limited, the whole head fits well within the sheet, and the man’s white pointed collar is roughly drawn out below the neck.

For Jacopo Bassano there are fewer drawings with which to compare directly, but examples include the study of an old man in New York^[2] and a smaller drawing of a man wearing a turban also in Rotterdam.^[3] Neither of these drawings, which are quite different from each other in their handling of the chalk, shows an especially strong resemblance to the present sheet. However, the motif of a bearded man in full profile appears frequently in Bassano’s paintings, for example as one of the Magi in Adoration of the Magi in Budapest,^[4] or in the painting Pentecost in Bassano del Grappa,^[5] and it is feasible that this drawing is related to an as yet unidentified painting. Art historian and museum director Edmund Pillsbury, on seeing the drawing in Rotterdam, believed it to be closer to Bassano than Barocci.^[6] It may have been made by a member of the Bassano workshop.