Female Head

Anonymous, Italian, Roman-Bolognese, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When this charming study of a young woman with downcast eyes and loosely flowing tresses entered the Museum's collection more than a century ago, it was believed to be the work of an artist active in Rome in the seventeenth century; later opinion inclined toward the Bolognese school. A definitive attribution remains to be formulated, but a likely possibility is Giulio Cesare Procaccini, an early Baroque painter active in Bologna and Milan. The physiognomy of the woman, with her averted gaze, shadowed, vaguely smiling aspect, and serene, elusive expression, is analogous to Procaccini's standard female "type." Among various examples that could be cited in this context, the Madonna in the artist's Holy Family in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, is particularly close to the woman in the Metropolitan's drawing.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art