Head of a Bearded Man

Domenico Fetti

1588/89–1623 · Black chalk, red, yellow, and pink pastel, highlighted with white on gray-green paper · Drawings and Prints

Consecutively active in Rome, Mantua, and Venice, Domenico Fetti is best known for his history paintings, but this drawing clearly exemplyfies his virtuosity as a fine portraitist. The intensity of the gaze of this astutely observed sitter recalls Fetti's celebrated painting, the Portrait of an Actor, in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. The highly controlled pastel technique Fetti is displaying here might have come from his master Lodovico Cigoli or might have been inspired by earlier examples by Federico Barocci and Jacopo Bassano. The attribution to Domenico Fetti goes back to the time of the French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette, whose attribution is elegantly inscribed on his signature-blue mount.

Artist

Domenico Fetti

Date

1588/89–1623

Medium

Black chalk, red, yellow, and pink pastel, highlighted with white on gray-green paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harry G. Sperling Fund, 1981