Follower of Fra Bartolommeo

This drawing was previously attributed to Lorenzo Costa (Ferrara ca. 1460–Mantua 1535), following a suggestion by Philip Pouncey of 1960, who considered it to be very similar to a painting depicting a Portrait of a Cardinal now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Negro 2001, no. 67, XXXI). The comparison with the painting, however, is not close enough for such an attribution; instead the figure type seems to derive from Fra Bartolomeo, as noted by William Griswold. The drawing may well be a copy after a lost work by Fra Bartolomeo or his circle.