Two Grotesque Heads

1510s?

Francesco Melzi

Artist, Italian, 1493 - c. 1570

An older man and woman with exaggerated facial features are shown from the chest up as they face each other in profile in this horizontal drawing on tan paper. To our left, the woman has a protruding, deeply wrinkled face with a blunt nose, squinting eyes, and a dramatically downturned mouth. Loose folds of skin sag down her neck and chest. She wears a C-shaped headdress with a loosely drawn veil hanging down the back. A delicate flower sticks out of the ample, wrinkled decolletage encased in her low-cut bodice. The man opposite her has deep-set eyes over a long, hooked nose and a lumpy, potato-like chin jutting out from his craggy face. His hair is covered by a headdress with a padded brim. A long scarf drapes over his head and across his chest. His shoulders and back are suggested by a few short pen strokes.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    pen and brown ink

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. Edward Fowles

  • Dimensions

    overall (approximate): 4.5 x 9.9 cm (1 3/4 x 3 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1980.63.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Reginald Herbert, 15th Earl of Pembroke, Wilton House, Salisbury; (sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London, 5-10 July 1917, no. 466, as Leonardo da Vinci?); Bacri, Paris; Edward Fowles, New York, 1938; his widow, Mrs. Edward Fowles, New York; gift 1980 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1988

  • Italian Renaissance Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1988, no cat.

1997

  • Leonardo Lives, Seattle Art Museum, 1997, no. 27.

2010

  • Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2010-2011, brochure no. 28 (shown only in Washington).

2018

  • Sense of Humor: Caricature, Satire, and the Comical in Prints and Drawings from Leonardo to the Present, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2018 - 2019.

Bibliography

1900

  • Strong, Sanford Arthur. Reproductions in Facsimile of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Collection of the earl of Pembroke and Montgomery at Wilton House. London, 1900: no. 15.

1950

  • Popham, A. E., and Pouncey, Philip. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. London, 1950: 73.

1982

  • Bean, Jacob, and Lawrence Turcic. 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1982: under no. 129.

1993

  • Pedretti, Carlo, and Trutty-Coohill, Patricia. The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and His Circle in America. Florence, 1993: 10, 46, 69, 93, no. 30e, fig. 1.

  • Trutty-Coohill, Patricia. "The Spencer Collection of Grotesques and Caricatures after Leonardo," Arte Lombarda, nos. 105-106-107, 1993: 53, note 15.

1995

  • exh. cat. The Touch of the Artist, Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995: 82, under no. 11, fig.3 (Pietro Marani).

1996

  • Trutty-Coohill, Patricia. "Americana Aftermath," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, 9, 1996: 205-206, fig. 2.

Wikidata ID

Q64562404

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