Art Institute of Chicago
Portrait of an Old Man
Attributed to Francesco Bonsignori
- Date
- late fifteenth century
- Medium
- Charcoal, with wet brush and stumping, on tan laid paper prepared with a gray ground
- Culture
- Italy
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
This moving portrait of an old man was made in northern Italy probably in the last decade of the 1400s and is the oldest drawing in the Gray collection. The man’s highly realistic unshaven chin, wrinkled flesh, sunken cheeks and eyes, and thinning hair exemplify the Renaissance desire to be truthful to nature. About this drawing, collector Richard Gray once observed, “Everything about it is masterful—the way it depicts a unique individual in the fullness of his individuality, it’s not a type. It has presence.”
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