Head of a Boy

Author: Rosie Razzall

This drawing with its flame-licked edges is one of the few Italian drawings saved from the fire of 1864 in the then Museum Boymans’ former site at the Schielandshuis, Rotterdam. Out of a total of 347 Italian drawings in the museum’s catalogue in 1852, only 19 sheets survived the fire.

In 1852 the drawing was attributed to Francesco Bassano, the eldest son of the Venetian painter Jacopo Bassano (c.1510-1592). Francesco trained alongside his brothers in his father’s workshop. The drawing is difficult to assess fully through the damage it has sustained, but it perhaps gives us an impression of the generally rather low level of quality of the Italian drawings that were lost in the fire. The drawing shows a study of a young boy drawn in black and red chalks, wearing a buttoned coat with a wide collar. Members of the Bassano workshop did make drawings in several colours of chalk, but the Rotterdam study is weak when compared with the more accomplished figure studies attributed to Francesco Bassano in London^[1] or New York.^[2] In 1970, Felton Gibbons suggested an attribution to the Florentine artist Giovanni Biliverti (1585-1644), whose figure studies and portraits in red and black chalk might be a closer comparison.^[3]