Caricature of a Man with Bushy Hair

about 1495

Medium

Pen and brown ink

Dimensions

6.6 × 5.4 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-215969

Leonardo da Vinci was in his early forties when he made this *Caricature of a Man with Bushy Hair* in Milan, Italy around 1495. He was just beginning *The Last Supper* mural for the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Inventor, artist, mathematician, naturalist, anatomist, engineer, and philosopher, Leonardo epitomized the quintessential Renaissance man. As a celebrated figure sought for important commissions, Leonardo worked for some of the most prominent families of Renaissance Europe, including the Medici of Italy and King Francis I of France. While he is now best known for works that celebrate notions of ideal human proportion and beauty, such as the *Vitruvian Man* and the *Mona Lisa*, his interest in physiognomy led him to seek out the full range of human expression and facial features. As the early artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) recorded, Leonardo was "so delighted when he saw curious heads, whether bearded or hairy, that he would follow anyone who had thus attracted his attention for a whole day, acquiring such a clear idea of him that when he went home he would draw the head as well as if the man had been present." This *Caricature of a Man with Bushy …