描述
This drawing was discovered underneath Leonardo's 'Allegory of the Fidelity of the Lizard' at the time of the acquisition of the latter from Thomas Nash in 1917. At that time the 'Allegory' was hinged to a blue mount bearing inscriptions in an early nineteenth-century French hand: "de la main de Leonardo da Vinci and l'écriture est á gauche, et doit se lire dans une glace." These comments obviously refer to the 'Allegory' with its long left-handed annotations. At the bottom of the old mount is penned the name Parmegianino, which seems to indicate the attribution preferred by the French collector J.-G. Legrand for the present drawing. Though the pen work in this head bears little resemblance to that of Parmigianino, the attribution is not entirely misdirected because the Parmese master did draw heads in profile that have in the past been confused with the work of Leonardo. By placing the present drawing in such close proximity to an autograph work by Leonardo, Legrand may have wished to suggest that the "Parmegianino" head derives from an original by Leonardo.