Head of a woman looking down towards the right

This drawing is clearly inspired by the head of the Virgin in Leonardo’s cartoon of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne of circa 1599-1600 now in the National Gallery, London. The draftsman has concentrated his attention on the play of light on the face and has hastily sketched the hair and the neck. In a letter to a previous owner quoted in the 1998 Phillips sale catalogue, Giulio Bora suggested Bernardino Luini as the most likely author of this drawing. Luini did execute a beautiful painted copy after the cartoon which he seems to have owned after Francesco Melzi inherited it from Leonardo (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana; exh. cat. La Sainte Anne l’ultime chef-d’oeuvre de Leonard de Vinci, op. cit., no. 100).