Plautilla Nelli, Head of a youth in a three-quarter profile, Uffizi Galleries, Prints and Drawings Department
Nelli’s ‘Youth’, stored and restored
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Nelli ‘inherited’ Fra’ Bartolomeo’s drawings and made her own as practice. Head of a youth in three-quarter profile was restored by AWA’s founder Jane Fortune in 2007. It is currently in storage. Scholars believe that Nelli began drawing practice in her adolescence when she first entered the Convent of Santa Caterina at the age of 14. Therein, she was able to study the work Fra’ Bartolomeo, a prime exponent of the San Marco School, to which Nelli’s painting style is deeply attuned. Nelli is thought to have acquired the master’s drawings in 1447, the year his main student, Fra’ Paolino died in Pistoia. In his Lives, Vasari writes ‘In the Monastery of Satnta Caterina da Siena on Piazza di San Marco, there is a nun who paints [Plautilla].