Female Head in Profile to the Left

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

Arslan cautiously suggested that this drawing of a woman’s head in profile in black and red chalk was made by the Venetian artist Leandro Bassano (1557-1622).^[1] Along with his three brothers, he worked in the sixteenth-century family workshop led by their father Jacopo (c. 1510-1592). The inscription on the verso of the drawing ‘B.B. no: 113’, which relates to the collection of the Sagredo family of collectors, likewise points in the direction of this studio. Doge Nicolò (1606-1676) was the founder of this collection and used a system of two-letter abbreviations to identify the makers of a work. The inscription on our drawing stands for ‘Bottega Bassanese’, meaning the Bassano family workshop.^[2] The other inscription on the verso, ‘301 Aqueta’, was probably also noted by Sagredo, this time to indicate the technique. He used the word ‘lapis’ for chalk and ‘aqueta’ or ‘aquesta’ for pen and ink.^[3]

Sagredo’s inscriptions were both incorrect, however. It is patently obvious that our drawing was done in chalk, not pen and ink, and there are no grounds for the attribution to the Bassano family. Although the use of coloured chalk in portrait studies is often associated with this workshop, it is clear from drawings attributed to Jacopo Bassano in New York^[4] and Vienna^[5] that his portrait and colour studies are much more painterly and sketchy than the Rotterdam sheet. Moreover, the handling of line in a portrait study by Leandro and now in Amsterdam^[6] is much rougher than is the case in our drawing.  

It is more likely that our drawing was made by another Venetian artist, Gabriele Caliari, who worked in the family workshop of his father Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). This is convincingly argued by Hans Huber, who states that the way the eye, ear and cheek are drawn is identical to those in a drawing in Paris,^[7] which he likewise attributes to Gabriele Caliari.^[8] An even greater resemblance to this artist’s manner, brought to the attention for the first time here, can be seen in a drawing in Chicago.^[9] In that study, it is not only the protruding eyes and the exact shape of the ear that correspond, the artist also used the same soft and subtle shades of chalk. The sheet in Chicago was initially attributed to Gabriele’s brother Carlo Caliari (1570-1596) since it seems to sit in a series of portrait studies by him.^[10] Susanna Folds McCullagh, though, attributes the sheet to Gabriele; in her view, his drawings are less controlled than his father’s and brother’s, with generic faces rendered more simply.^[11] The style of our drawing is similar and there are agreements with the sheets in Paris and Chicago, making an attribution to Gabriele Caliari the most likely.