Head of a Young Man (1715–1717): Art, History and Details

Head of a Young Man (1715–1717) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antoine Coypel (French, 1661–1722).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The most important French painter of his generation, Antoine Coypel worked during the period of transition from the monarchy of Louis XIV (reigned 1643-1715) through the Regency (1715-1723) and the ascendance of Louis XV (reigned 1715-1774). A beautiful colorist also steeped in the academic tradition of drawing, Coypel used red, black, and white chalk together on this sheet to achieve tonal range. The drawing is connected to Coypel's greatest achievement: the series of large painted decorations for the Gallery of Aeneas in the Palais Royal in Paris. This study of facial expression shows one of the mourners attending the funeral of Pallas, a scene from Virgil's (70-19 bc) Aeneid. Though this painting still exists in the collection of the Louvre Museum, it is in a ruined state. Most of the paintings for the Gallery of Aeneas did not survive at all, but there are numerous drawings for the project.

Object facts

• Title: Head of a Young Man
• Date: 1715–1717
• Creator attribution: Antoine Coypel (French, 1661–1722)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: red, black, and white chalk with stumping
• Dimensions: Sheet: 25.1 x 18.9 cm (9 7/8 x 7 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.342

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Coypel, Antoine, Hélène Jagot, Jessica Degain, and Guillaume Kazerouni. Le théâtre de Troie: Antoine Coypel, d'Homère à Virgile. Tours : Musée des beaux-arts ; Paris : LienArt, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.