Late Renaissance Heads (Monochrome)

Palma Vecchio
Self-portrait
ca. 1510
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Domenico Beccafumi
Self-portrait
before 1513
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Domenico Beccafumi
Head of a woman
ca. 1520-30
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

"As the effort of learning may perhaps seem to the young too laborious, I think I should explain here how painting is worthy of all our attention and study.  Painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the absent present (as they say of friendship), but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later, so that they are recognized by spectators with pleasure and deep admiration for the artist.  Plutarch tells us that Cassandrus, one of Alexander's commanders, trembled all over at the sight of a portrait of the deceased Alexander, in which he recognized the majesty of his king.  He also tells us how Agesilaus the Lacaedaemonian, realizing that he was very ugly, refused to allow his likeness to be known to posterity, and so would not be painted or modelled by anyone.  Through painting, the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time."   

Andrea del Sarto
Female profile head
before 1530
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Lorenzo Lotto
Portrait of a bearded man
ca. 1535-40
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Pieter Lastman
Bearded man praying
1603
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Annibale Carracci
Head of bearded man
before 1609
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Annibale Carracci
Caricature profile of a man wearing a turban
before 1609
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Agostino Carracci
Head of helmeted soldier
before 1602
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Federico Barocci
Three-quarter back view of a male head
before 1612
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Hendrik Goltzius
Two studies of a model with lifted chin
before 1617
drawing
private collection

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Margaret Lemon 
(van Dyck's principal model and mistress)
before 1639
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous artist after Guido Reni
Profile head of a woman
ca. 1650
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Guercino
Study for the head of the Virgin
before 1666
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

"We should also consider it a very great gift to men that painting has represented the gods they worship, for painting has contributed considerably to the piety which binds us to the gods, and to filling our minds with sound religious beliefs.  It is said that Phidias made a statue of Jove in Elis, whose beauty added not a little to the received religion.  How much painting contributes to the honest pleasures of the mind, and to the beauty of things, may be seen in various ways but especially in the fact that you will find nothing so precious which association with painting does not render far more valuable and highly prized.  Ivory, gems, and all other similar precious things are made more valuable by the hand of the painter.  Gold too, when embellished by the art of painting, is equal in value to a far larger quantity of gold.  Even lead, the basest of metals, if it were formed into some image by the hand of Phidias or Praxiteles, would probably be regarded as more precious than rough unworked silver.  The painter Zeuxis began to give his works away, because, as he said, they could not be bought for money.  He did not believe any price could be found to recompense the man who, in modelling or painting living things, behaved like a god among mortals." 

– texts by Leon Battista Albert, from De Pictura (On Painting), originally written in Latin in Florence in 1435, edited and translated by Cecil Grayson and published by Phaidon Press in 1972