Two Male Heads in Profile to the Left

Author: Rosie Razzall

This drawing was once part of the same sheet as I 178,^[1] as well as a third drawing in Cambridge (Mass.).^[2] When the three sheets are placed together (fig.), the cut horses’ heads and manes on the verso are reunited, as is a piece of armour in the lower right corner.^[3] The whole sheet consisted of three rows of two heads on top of one another on the recto, all facing in the same direction, and six horses’ heads separated by horizontal lines on the verso prepared with a light grey ground; a typical layout for a page from a model book. The artist paid close attention to the individuality of the facial features, hairstyles and headwear. On the recto of this part of the sheet, an older, bearded man with wrinkled forehead wears a close-fitting cap (berretta), and a younger, plumper man wears a cap (cappuccio) with a rolled brim (mazzocchio) and trailing tail (becchetto).^[4]

The whole sheet was presumably cut into three separate rectangular compositions either in or before Karl Eduard von Liphart’s ownership in the nineteenth century, as each sheet bears its own separate stamp from that collector. Despite being separated into three parts, all sheets had the same provenance until 1908 when they were bought by different buyers. Two of the sheets were subsequently acquired at different dates by Franz Koenigs as works by Pisanello (c.1395-1455). This attribution was soon questioned, and by 1934 they were exhibited as drawings by Pisanello’s master Gentile da Fabriano (c.1375-1427).^[5]

However, no consensus has emerged as to whether the drawing(s) can be placed in northern Italy/Verona, or, as Degenhart/Schmitt have suggested, in Tuscany/Siena. This latter supposition is largely because of their similarity to a profile head on a sheet in Milan,^[6] although Degenhart/Schmitt subsequently returned that sheet to Pisanello’s workshop.^[7] The scholars justified their Sienese attribution by noting that the heads are profiled and contoured like other Tuscan drawings, but are softer than Florentine examples such as those in Vienna^[8] or Paris^[9] which have a tendency towards caricature.^[10] They date the Rotterdam-Harvard sheets to no later than ten years after these Florentine examples. The range of different headwear suggests they may have served as a variety of reference types, perhaps for a crowd scene, rather than as portraits of specific people.^[11] The notations in pen and ink on the recto, barely legible on this sheet, are colour notes. Degenhart and Schmitt also acknowledged that such notes appear on profile drawings by Pisanello, such as the portrait of Emperor Sigismond de Luxembourg in Paris.^[12]

Other scholars have settled on the drawing(s) belonging to northern Italy or Verona, with some entertaining the possibility of the vicinity of Pisanello. Mongan and Sachs, unaware of the Rotterdam counterparts, proposed an attribution of the Harvard sheet to the circle of Pisanello,^[13] and in 1979 Julian Hatton also agreed that the drawings have a ‘North Italian character’, placing them in Verona and Pisanello’s circle.^[14] Nevertheless, that author’s suggestion that these heads are copied from frescoes in Florence cannot be supported; despite his claim, the heads in the Rotterdam drawings do not look like the figures in the Holy Trinity by Masaccio (1401-1428) or a soldier in one of the frescoes by Andrea da Firenze (deceased 1377) for the Spanish chapel, both in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Degenhart and Schmitt ultimately compare the two Rotterdam drawings and the Harvard sheet with several profile studies by Pisanello in Paris, and this provides the most compelling evidence to disregard an attribution to that artist. In the drawing of a monk,^[15] for example, Pisanello’s focus is on the profile with the form of the head barely indicated, and in the drawing of Alphonse d'Aragon^[16] too the facial features receive more attention than the head as a whole. The studies on the Rotterdam sheets, however, treat the head, face and shoulders as a comprehensive form. More recent scholars have rejected both a Tuscan and a Pisanello origin for the Rotterdam-Harvard group, suggesting the sheet may come from elsewhere in Verona or northern Italy.^[17] In the absence of a more tangible attribution, the drawing is credited here to an anonymous northern Italian artist.