Florentine School
c.1520

Head of a Boy

Black and white chalk
115 x 86 mm

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Boston

The soft modelling or sfumato in this striking life-drawing of a young boy places it squarely within the early sixteenth-century Florentine school, the technique being closely associated with both Leonardo da Vinci and his master Verocchio. More specifically, it appears to be from the hand of an artist familiar with, or trained in the circle of such painters as Fra Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto. An attribution to Domenico Puligo, the pupil of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and close follower of Andrea del Sarto, has been suggested. A red chalk drawing of a bust of a young woman in the British Museum appears close in style and character (B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago, 1938, II, no. 2376).