Public data from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Learn more
About the Artwork
From an early age, Gaetano Gandolfi was admired for his drawings, many of which were created as independent works of art and avidly collected by Italian and British patrons. This drawing is one of Gandolfi’s so-called teste pittoriche, or pictorial heads. Devised by the artist in the 1770s, this genre is based on contemporary academic theories that proposed that human emotions could be scientifically classified by facial expressions.
Inscriptions
verso, upper left, in graphite: [9?]; lower left, in graphite: 91127; lower right, in graphite(?): 6 -
Provenance
[R. E. Lewis, Inc.] (according to departmental card)
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1970. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 10-March 7, 1971). Connoisseurship in Italian Figural Compositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 1980-February 15, 1981). 18th Century Master Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 6-November 22, 1981). Graphic Humor. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 1-August 29, 1982). Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734–1802)
- Date
- 1750–1800
- Medium
- pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 29.5 x 20.2 cm (11 5/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Frederick M. Mayer
- Accession no.
- 1969.277
More by Gaetano Gandolfi in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011044
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