Profile Head of a Man

Franciabigio was a contemporary and sometime business partner of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and worked alongside him in the grand fresco projects at SS. Annunziata and the villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. He followed Sarto's example as a draftsman, increasingly adopting red chalk for life studies that might be incorporated into his painted works. The small, sensitively drawn head in this example does not match exactly one in Franciabigio's paintings, but men wearing similar hats at with similar expressions are found in his Triumph of Cicero at Poggio a Caiano, and the drawing was almost certainly made at the time of that project.