Portrait of a young friar

This colorful portrait of a young monk is the work of Carlo Caliari, the youngest son of Paolo Veronese. Carlo, also known as Carletto, together with his uncle Benedetto and his older brother Gabriele inherited Veronese’s artistic practice after the master’s death in 1588. Carletto was one of the most accomplished draftsmen in his father’s workshop and excelled particularly in the creation of expressive head studies drawn with colored chalks on blue or white paper, a technique he had learned during his training with the Bassano family. Recent scholarship has shown how many of Carletto’s head drawings were used as preparatory studies for his own paintings and also for works of other members of the family workshop (see A. McCarthy, ‘Carletto Caliari Head’s Studies. A unification of Disegno e Colorito’, in Disegni a pietra rossa. Fonti, tecniche e stili 1500-1800 ca., Florence, 2021, pp. 93-103). This drawing relates to a larger group of studies by Carlo Caliari, now dispersed in museums and private collections, that in the 17th Century were owned by the Venetian gentleman Zaccaria Sagredo. The sheet was once mounted in an album, and part of the album page - with the Sagredo numbering and initials ‘C.C.’ referring to Carletto Caliari - is currently framed with the drawing. Directly on the verso of this sheet there is an inscription ‘400 Aqueta’ that connects it to other similar studies by the artist, such as, for example, the head study identified with the Portrait of Paolo Paruta in the British Museum (inv. 1946,0713.23), which is inscribed ‘411 Aqueta’, and another version of the same portrait in Dublin (National Gallery of Ireland, inv. 2715), inscribed ‘414 Aqueta’. It appears that these inscriptions correspond to a classification system created by an early collector from whom presumably Zaccaria Sagredo acquired some drawings for his collection (see K. Gottardo, ‘Il gusto collezionistico di un eccentrico personaggio veneziano. La raccolta di disegno di ‘Zotto’ Sagredo’, in Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima, ed. B. Aikema et al., Venice, 2005, p. 246).