THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN 
Girolamo Macchietti (1535-1592)

Details
Girolamo Macchietti (1535-1592)

The Head of a Boy, looking up to the left

with inscription 'di Leonardo da Vinci' (recto); black chalk
8½ x 6 7/8in. (216 x175mm.)
Provenance
Ignazio Hugford, and by inheritance to Lamberto Gistiano Gori, with his inscription 'di Leonardo da Vinci./...Bernardo...di Sig. Ignazio...al preferter di mi Lamberto Cristian.../...20 Dicembre 1788'. Sir Thomas Lawrence (L.2445).
The Fontana Collection, according to an inscription verso.

Lot Essay

The features of the head in profile to the left are very similar to that of a crouching figure in a red chalk drawing sold at Christie's, 7 July 1981, lot 14 (as Salviati) exhibited at Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum, L.J. Feinberg, From Studio to Studiolo, 1990, no. 25, illustrated. One finds the same elongated shape of the nose, the slightly protuding back of the head and the fully drawn upper lip. Another sheet of the same measurements and technique as the Oberlib sheet is in the Uffizi (J. Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo, Harvard, 1964, no. A121, inv. 6658F). It bears an old attribution to Bronzino shows two nudes with a similar profile. Another close profile, although in reverse, is that of Saint Lawrence in The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, L. Feinberg, op. cit, p. 31, fig. 33.
We are grateful to Professor Janet Cox-Rearick for suggesting the attribution.