Cartoon for the Head of Saint James
about 1520
- Medium
- Black and white chalk, on two joined sheets of tan paper; silhouetted; pricked for transfer
- Dimensions
- 30.2 × 30.5 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-199684
In this highly sculptural drawing of a head, Sebastiano del Piombo combined black and white chalk to fully model a three-dimensional form. The roughly applied black chalk accentuates the impression of the play of light over the saint's face. Roughly drawn lines suggest the tousled curls on his head, while softer shadows darken his cheeks and eye socket. White chalk highlights the edges of his nose and ear. Sebastiano produced this cartoon for the figure of Saint James in a fresco in a chapel in Rome. In the final fresco, the head of the saint appears at a sharp angle; the joins of the sheets making up this cartoon indicate that it also was composed this way. This head once formed part of a larger sheet, but someone silhouetted it at a later date.
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- about 1520 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — drawings
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