Study of a Skull in 6 views

Red chalk on vergato paper
Based on Bernardino Genga (1620-1690)
Late 17th, early 18th Century


H 30 x W 22 cm
(framed: H 41 x W 31 cm)
H 11 7/8 x W 8 2/3 inch
(framed: H 16 1/8 x W 12 1/5 inch)




This carefully ordered sheet, with six skulls disposed in two vertical columns of three, is conceived in explicit dialogue with Bernardino Genga’s engraving of the skull in six views, published in Rome by Domenico de Rossi in Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno (1691). In Genga’s osteological section—the first part of the book—one plate presents the cranium frontally, in strict profile, and at oblique and basal angles, exactly the constellation adopted here to train the eye in rotational comprehension of form. The National Library of Medicine preserves this plate (“engraving of six skulls in two columns of three”), while the Metropolitan Museum holds the Roman 1691 edition under de Rossi’s imprint.

Drawn in warm sanguine, the drawing translates the copperplate’s analytical program into the flexible, didactic language of chalk: the artist softens contour where bone turns from light, emphasises sutures, orbital rims, zygomatic arches and dental arcade, and thickens hatchings to stabilise shadow at mandible and occiput. The regular spacing and near-uniform scale betray an academic purpose—either a direct copy after Genga for study, or a teaching model derived from the plate. The support, a sheet of vergato paper with its characteristic chain-lines and textured ribbing, reinforces the dating to the late 17th–early 18th century, as this paper type was widely used in Italy at the time for both artistic and academic drawings.

Genga’s project “anatomy for the use and understanding of drawing” was expressly aimed at artists. His osteology and myology plates were compiled from preparations used in teaching; the second half of the volume applies anatomical understanding to antique sculpture (Laocoön, Farnese Hercules, Borghese Gladiator, etc.), bridging studio practice and classical ideals. The book’s enormous impact is also evidenced by its early English adaptation (Anatomy Improv’d, London, 1723), which re-engraved the skull plates for a northern audience. This drawing sits within this transmission, reflecting how Genga’s prints were copied, internalised, and redeployed by draughtsmen to master cranial volumes and the play of light across bone.

Whether drawn as a direct copy, a workshop exemplar, or a student’s exercise, the drawing demonstrates the pedagogical virtues of the Genga plate: rotational logic, economy of means, and descriptive clarity. On its sheet of vergato-paper, it is an eloquent witness to the crossroads of art and anatomy in Rome around 1700; when engravings circulated from the printer’s shop into academies and private portfolios, and when the skull, multiplied across a single sheet, became both object of scientific scrutiny and foundation of artistic invention.