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, Italian, c.1456-1536
Title
A Female Head
Datec.1480s
MediumSilverpoint on a prepared ground
Dimensions
23 cm
Credit LinePurchased, 1866
Object numberNGI.2069
DescriptionSilverpoint drawings are created using a stylus with a silver tip on a prepared ground. The lines are defined and precise and there is little room for error. This idealised head may be a study for the Madonna. It is similar to a painting by the same artist, Virgin and Child (ng.593), in the collection of the National Gallery, London. Both works illustrate di Credi’s vision of grace and beauty.

Lorenzo di Credi trained in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488), alongside Leonardo da Vinci. di Credi began his career as a sculptor but, as contemporary writer Giorgio Vasari in his famous Lives of the Artists explained, he began to move towards painting:‘growing in courage, then, Lorenzo attached himself to Andrea Verrocchio, who at that time had taken it into his head to devote himself to painting; and under him, having Pietro Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci as his companions and friends and although they were rivals, he set himself with all diligence to learn to paint’. In Renaissance Italy, drawing was the basis of all the arts and young painters and sculptors alike spent many years in the workshop copying from master drawings and sketching from the model.
ProvenanceRichard Cosway; R. Houlditch; Revd Dr H. Wellesley; purchased, Sotheby's, London, 25 June 1866, Revd Dr H. Wellesley sale, lot 363 Exhibition HistoryExhibition of Italian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1930

Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964
Drawings from the National Gallery of Ireland, Wildenstein, London/New York, 1967

Master European Drawings From the Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado; Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minnesota; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1983