The Head of a Young Boy Crowned with Laurel

Head of a Young Boy Crowned with Laurel is a magnificent example of Lorenzo di Credi’s appealing draftsmanship. The drawing is a highly finished cartoon (a study for design transfer) for the head of a prominent youthful shepherd in Credi’s Adoration of the Shepherds (Uffizi, Florence). One of the largest and most important works of his career, the altarpiece was commissioned by the Florentine wool merchant Jacopo Bongianni for a chapel in the church of Santa Chiara, Florence, and likely dates between 1500 and 1505.

The artist used the black chalk with extreme subtlety to model the features and show the delicate fall of light on the face, and it is easy to forget that chalk draftsmanship was in its infancy at this time, having become common only twenty years before. With a delicate technique very similar to that of his studio colleagues Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi particularly used black chalk for head studies. The current sheet has pinpricked holes along many of the lines to transfer the design to the panel, but there is no sign that chalk dust was knocked through these holes, as would have been the practice. Instead, it seems that the artist—understandably—wished to preserve this beautiful sheet and used the pricking to create an intermediary working cartoon (most cartoons were ruined in the process of transferring the design to the panel).

As was common practice, this drawing was quite possibly used by the artist on a second occasion, since laurel leaves (which are not pricked) were added around the head, perhaps for a figure of Apollo, although no painting by Credi with such a figure survives today.