Portrait Bust of a Cardinal

This black chalk portrait bust of an unknown cardinal from the Joseph F. McCrindle collection joins a second sheet by Ottavio Leoni of the Cardinal Camillo Borghese in the Morgan Library & Museum (inv. I, 24). Ottavio Leoni and his son Ippolito Leoni (1627-73) made numerous portrait studies of the clergy and aristocracy in seventeenth-century Rome. While the identification of this sitter is uncertain, the execution of the cardinal's face and hat (or biretta) resembles Ottavio Leoni's many drawings such as The Portrait of Scipione Borghese, ca. 1605 in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin (inv. 17105) (Bernardina Sani, La fatica virtuosa di Ottavio Leoni. Turin, 2005, no. 41).