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Lot Essay
In terms of style and composition, the highly accomplished profile portrait offered here relates very closely to a series of drawings and sculpted profile portraits of bearded men unanimously accepted as being by the controversial mannerist artist Baccio Bandinelli. In their article relating to the self-portraits by Bandinelli, Galicka and Sygietynska (loc. cit.) discuss, among others, two signed marble reliefs in the Museo del Opera del Duomo and in the Jablonna Palace, near Warsaw (ibid., pl. 45). Seen in the greater context of his oeuvre, these reliefs seem with little doubt to be self-portraits. In each instance one sees the same treatment of the short, cropped, hair, the strong forehead, the thick-set neck and long curling beard. The present lot shares these characteristics, however, it depicts a younger man, possibly in his fifties, and shows none of the obvious signs of aging. Here the sitter is carved without the visible temporal artery, pouches under the eyes and distended jugular artery which are seen on the other reliefs suggesting that this marble may also be a portrait of Bandinelli, but carved at an earlier date.