The author of this portrait has resisted discovery, although he was almost certainly a North Italian artist, working in the late fifteenth century, probably in Lombardy or Venice. Eugene Thaw first recognized that a bust portrait of a Man in Profile in the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth (inv. 953; Jaffe 1994(d), no. 927) is by the same hand as the Morgan drawing. A deliberate methodical outline defines the features of the sitters in both images, as well as a similar understanding of volume, form, and application of highlights. The pronounced resemblance of the sitters has led to the suggestion that they are members of the same family and the drawings part of a portrait series.
Two further profile portraits, similar in technique and handling, and by the same hand, may be associated with this group. One is the drawn likeness of a young man wearing a beret, in profile to the left, in the Louvre (inv. 4657; Paris 1977-1978, 57-58, no. 13), the other, of an older man, also in profile to the left and wearing a cap, is in Chantilly (inv. 117; Villard 1998, 58-60). In 2001, Giovanni Agosti posited that a drawing in the Uffizi, Florence, of a Portrait of a Man, in Profile to the Left, Wearing a Cap (inv. 1916 F; Florence 2001, 170, no. 32) was also by the same hand as the Morgan, Chatsworth, Paris and Chantilly sheets. Although this sheet is in poor condition, it does seem also to be by the same hand as the Morgan Library drawing.
Filippo Mazzola (Parma ca. 1460-1505 Parma), the father of Parmigianino, has been suggested for the Morgan sheet, but this attribution is not convincing. It has also been given, also untenably, to Marco Palmezzano (1458-1539). Agosti plausibly places the Morgan drawing in the area of Venice, Milan, and Bologna, not later than 1510, by an artist like Antonio Rimpatta and Antonio Solario. Ballarin, on the other hand, maintains that the hand is Lombard, in the direction of his reconstruction of the true figural type of Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis (Milan, ca. 1455 - after 1508).
Watermark: none.