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| Artist | Beccafumi, Domenico (Italian painter, 1486-1551) |
| Title | Classical Head |
| Date earliest | about 1525 |
| Date latest | about 1540 |
| Material | oil on paper |
| Measurements | 22.4 x 16.5 cm |
| Description | Unusually for the period, Beccafumi used the oil medium for this sketch of a man's head. This medium appears to have been chosen to allow the artist to develop the feeling of depth, created through a limited palette of brown and beige. This sketch comes from a series of studies of figures and heads which the artist produced in the 1520s and 1530s. In this work the artist created a facial type which resembles that found in Roman frescoes, and which suggests that Beccafumi had seen examples of these. This demonstrates the importance of classical art as a source of inspiration in the Renaissance. |
| Subject | figure |
| Collection | Brighton Museum and Art Gallery |
| Current accession number | FA102325 |
| Acquisition details | Bequeathed by L. L. Bloomfield 1916. |
| Notes | See also inv. nos. FA102326 and FA102324. Beccafumi's interest in the possibilities offered by different media to create paintings, sculpture, prints and architecture, could be seen as a reflection of the ideas and interests of the Renaissance period. The use of oil to produce the sketches is very unusual for the period. A number of oil sketches by the artist survive and their production seems to have coincided with the artist's period of experimentation with woodblock printing in the 1520s and 1530s. Both media offered the artist the opportunity to convey depth through tone. For further examples of Beccafumi's studies of heads and figures, see: Torriti, P., Beccafumi, Milan, 1998. For Beccafumi's printing methods and drawings, see: Lincoln, E., The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Print Maker, New Haven, 2000. |
| Rights status | Brighton Museum and Art Gallery |
| Author | Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings |
