Netherlandish School

Watermark: none.
This drawing and the Head of a Papal Guard at the Morgan (inv. I, 261) were part of a series of seven silverpoint drawings that were together until the late nineteenth century. The old Italian inscriptions identify the sitters as members of prominent Italian banking families that had ties with the Low Countries. Memling and his contemporaries had established a taste among Italians for portraits by Northern artists, and it is possible that the sitters sought a Netherlandish artist to draw their portraits when they were visiting the north. These freely drawn portraits were probably made from life. -- Exhibition Label, from "Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a Reunited Altarpiece"
The sitter at right is probably Giuliano del Tovaglia (1507-1559), born in Florence 16 November 1507. He was executed in 1559 for having conspired to defraud Cosimo I's government of 40,000 ducats. (See Carol Bresnahan Menning, "Finance and Fraud During the Reign of Cosimo I: The Case of Giuliano del Tovaglia," The Historian 51 (1988): 1-18.) The son of his second cousin Catharina del Tovaglia moved to Antwerp around 1550 and married a Dutch noblelady in Middelburg/Zeeland in 1552; it is possible that Giuliano travelled to the Netherlands for the wedding at that this portrait was made at that time.