A Head of a Young Man, gazing upward, black chalk, heightened with white, on blue laid paper, inscribed “Folli” in pen and brown ink, 11,3 x 10,2 cm, old mount, unmounted, unframed, (Sch)

Provenance:
Collection Stefan von Licht (1860–1932), Vienna, Lugt 789b.

The old attribution to the Siena artist Sebastiano Folli (ca. 1569–1622) seems plausible, if one compares the head of a young monk in the painting “The Mystic Wedding of Saint Catherine” (ca. 1609) by Folli, preserved in the Basilica di San Domenico in Siena with the posture of the head of the young man in the present sketch. The present study derives from the collection of Stefan von Licht, who possessed several sheets of Siena artists from sketchbooks of early Siena collectors, including a sheet of Folli’s teacher Alessandro Casolani (1552-1607), which was once attributed to Sebastiano Folli. Alternatively, the present head study is also comparable with a design by Annibale Carracci in the Musée du Louvre (Inv. No. 73225;
“Nude in profile toward left”, black chalk, heightened with white, ca. 1597–1602) for the figure on the right-hand side in the painting “The Flaying of Marsyas” in the vaults of the Gallerie Farnese in Rome. The study can perhaps be attributed to an artist in the circle of the Carracci.