Uomo a mezzo busto di profilo rivolto verso destra (recto)

The sheet that has become part of the Pinacoteca di Brera’s Disegni collections thanks to the bequest of Lamberto Vitali since 1994 has been lettered on both sides.

The recto on this sheet features an elderly man in profile facing to the right and depicted in a half-length, slightly deformed pose. It belongs to a type of Leonardo’s physiognomic studies that lies somewhere between a portrait and a “grotesque” study based on imagination. In both cases, physiognomic exercises were an enduring and almost obsessive practice for Leonardo, especially those of grotesque heads.

The old man depicted on this sheet seems to have been studied from life, however; in fact, wrinkles branch out along his forehead in a natural way, his eyelids are naturally drooping, and even his neck shows the characteristic marks of an old man. His ugliness is therefore real and believable rather than grotesque and caricatured.