Head in Three-Quarter Profile (recto); Standing Young Man Pointing Left and Sketches of Feet, Arm (verso)

This double-sided drawing attributed to Giorgione consists of a Head in Three-Quarter Profile on the recto in red chalk and a Standing Young Man Pointing Left with Studies of Feet and an Arm on the verso in black chalk with pen and brown ink and red chalk. Giorgione, the enigmatic Venetian painter whose brief career and small surviving oeuvre have made him one of the most debated figures in Renaissance art, is represented in drawings by a handful of attributions that scholars continue to dispute, making each proposed Giorgione drawing an object of intense study and controversy. The recto head, with its soft sfumato modeling in red chalk, demonstrates the technique of creating gradual tonal transitions through hatching and stumping that Giorgione and his circle developed in response to Leonardo da Vincis revolutionary approach to shading. The three-quarter profile, with the sitters gaze directed away from the viewer, creates an effect of psychological inwardness that distinguishes Giorgiones portraiture from the more direct approach of his Venetian contemporaries. The verso studies, combining different drawing media for different purposes, black chalk for the figure, pen and ink for contour, and red chalk for detail, reveal the systematic working method that underlies the apparently effortless poetry of Giorgiones paintings.

Attributed drawings by Giorgione are among the most debated objects in Renaissance art history, and each one opens a window onto the working methods of the most mysterious painter of the Venetian Renaissance. The combination of red chalk sfumato on the recto and multi-media studies on the verso demonstrates the technical sophistication that produced the poetic ambiguity of Giorgiones paintings.

A double-sided drawing attributed to Giorgione with a red chalk head on the recto and multi-media figure studies on the verso, demonstrating the sfumato technique and systematic working method that underlie the poetic ambiguity of the most enigmatic painter of the Venetian Renaissance.