Two Studies of the Head of a Girl and a Caricature of a Child's Face
XVI century. Red chalk on yellow paper.Not on display
Probably these two charming studies of the head of a girl must have been done from life, without any specific painting in mind. After completing the two principal studies, the artist—doubtless provoked by the large, rather haunting eyes of his model—seems to have allowed his mind to wander, for he then doodled the strange, unfinished grotesque, top right, which is partly cut away by the right edge of the sheet. Seen from the front, this head is tilted to the left, like the study at the bottom of the sheet, its globular eyes wide open, staring back at the spectator.
The style of the drawing seems to point to an artist working in Rome, not in the middle of the sixteenth century, as suggested by the old inscription on the verso, but towards the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth, possibly even later
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.196, 428
