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Five Grotesque Heads
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineFive Grotesque Heads, 1750–1800. Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734–1802). Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk; sheet: 29.5 x 20.2 cm (11 5/8 x 7 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Frederick M. Mayer, 1969.277
