Female Head

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.