Plautilla Nelli, Head and shoulders of a young woman, Uffizi Galleries, Prints and Drawings, Department
Plautilla’s lady, quality ‘unexpected’
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Project curator poses questions. Head and shoulders of a Young Women is part of a series of nine drawings attributed to Nelli at the Uffizi’s Prints and Drawing Departments, which was restored by AWA’s founder Jane Fortune in 2007. In her essay, “In the Shadow of the Friar”, Department curator Marzia Faietti poses an interesting question about the evocative sketch: “Though reminiscent of the typology in the Seated Madonna nursing, this drawing is nevertheless rendered with a softness of chiaroscuro never attained elsewhere. Can this qualitative peak be explained by Vasari’s praise for her portraits of women, in which Plautilla seems to outdo herself, even though, if we take Vasari at his word, she never painted portraits except in individual figures within her devotional compositions?”