Study of Female Head

Vittore Carpaccio

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Vittore Carpaccio. The drawing shows the head of a woman tilted downwards and to the right; her gaze follows this direction. The woman is wearing a decorated headdress and her hair is arranged in a flowing curve to the right. The original drawing was in black and white chalk on greenish-grey paper. The text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society for prints 5 and 6 have been grouped together. This texts reads: "Nos. 7, 8 VITTORE CARPACCIO (b. about 1455-6; d. betw. 1524 and 1527) TWO STUDIES OF FEMALE HEADS Collection of the Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy. From the Richardson, Sir A. Westcombe, and Malcolm Collections. Black chalk (shaded with the point of the brush in bistre and heightened with white) on greenish-grey paper. 23.9 x 18.6 cm. (9 7/16 x 7 5/16 in.). These, as Mr. Sidney Colvin has shown, are studies for the two women who accompany the Virgin in the picture of the Presentation painted for the Church of San Giobbe in 1510 and now in the Academy at Venice. The facing head is also found amongst the female martyrs on the right of the picture of St. Ursula in glory, which was painted as early as 1491; the head in this earlier picture resembles the drawing more closely in the arrangement of the headdress and other externals, but in character and conception the drawing stands nearer to the later picture. It would appear therefore that the drawings were made as early as 1491, that only one of them was used at the time for the Ursula series, and that Carpaccio returned to them when designing his great altar-piece nearly twenty years later."