Three female heads

A photograph of a drawing depicting three female heads now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 37 recto). This drawing features fours heads on the verso (see RCIN 854424 for a photograph of the verso).

Ferino Pagden (see Bibliographic References) noted that this drawing (both recto and verso) was interpreted by Ernst Steinmann as being related to the fresco of 'The finding of Moses', painted by Pietro Perugino in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican and destroyed in 1540 by Michelangelo's 'Last Judgement'. Only the two heads depicted at the bottom of the verso are related to compositions still existing today ('The Circumcision' and 'Moses leaving for Egypt' by Perugino in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican). See also RCIN 854418.
 
This drawing is part of the so-called "Libretto di Raffaello" or "Libretto Veneziano", 53 sheets that used to be mounted in a volume. After complicated negotiations, the sketchbook was bought by the museum in the 1820s, after the death of Giuseppe Bossi, who was its previous owner. A number of scholars debated the author of the drawings (with many names proposed, such as Pinturicchio, Antonio da Viterbo, Eusebio del Giorgio, Girolamo Genga) and their date. In 1984, the Gallerie dell'Accademia catalogued the drawings as by an artist contemporary to Raphael, whose juvenile works he copied in this sketchbook (see Bibliographic References).