Head of a woman

Details

Giulio Cesare Procaccini (Bologna 1574-1625 Milan)
Head of a woman
with inscription 'di Elisabetta Sirani Bolognice' (on verso)
black, red and white chalk on blue paper, exetended by a later hand on another sheet of paper
10 x 8¾ in. (25.3 x 20 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 12 January 1990, lot 58, where acquired by the late owner.

Literature

N. Ward Neilson, Giulio Cesare Procaccini disegnatore, Busto Arsizio, 2004, pp. 77-8, 240, no. 107, fig. 180.

Lot Essay

Sensibly drawn with Procaccini’s distinctive technique in black and red chalk, this head study was published by Nancy Ward Neilson (op. cit.) and dated to the second decade of the 17th Century, when the artist was largely influenced by Genoese art and the local work of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). The figure’s delicate yet pointy facial features appear, in fact, as a clear homage to the great Flemish painter. The sheet relates closely to the Head of an Angel in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. 24985), also drawn on blue paper, and might be a preparatory study for the angel’s face seen at right in Procaccini’s Holy Family in the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, Milan (inv. 218).

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