Two Deformed Heads Facing Inwards
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 3 5/8 × 4 13/16 in. (9.1 × 12.2 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Barbara E. Fox, from the Collection of Howard A. Fox, MD, and Barbara E. Fox, 2022
Accession Number
2022.131.3
Art Historical Context
This delicate etching, *Two Deformed Heads Facingwards* (ca. 1654), showcases the masterful reproductive skills of Wenceslaus Hol, a Bohemian printmaker renowned for his intricate copies of Renaissance masterpieces. Hollar faithfully rendered this composition after an original drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, capturing the Italian polymath's probing exploration of human anatomy and pathology. Leonardo, ever the observer of nature, sketched such "grotesque" heads to study facial deformities, expressions, and the underlying structures of the body—insights drawn from his dissections and insatiable c...
About the Artist
Wenceslaus Hollar|Leonardo da Vinci · 1607–1677
Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was a prolific Bohemian etcher who became one of the most accomplished printmakers of the seventeenth century. Born in Prague, he trained under Matthäus Merian in Frankfurt before entering the service of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, in 1636. Hollar spent most of his career in England, where he produced approximately 2,740 etchings documenting an extraordinary range...