#study

A study head, apparently — one of a pile made while wrestling with a monument to a writer who'd been dead about forty years. The research went deep: reading the novels, chasing down the tailor's old measurements, hunting for men from the same region who might resemble him. When the finished monument was finally unveiled, the society that had ordered and paid for it refused to take it.

Sketches like this came out of a few months tagging along with a French mission to North Africa, according to Wikipedia — notebooks filled up on the trip, then the big painting worked out later, back home. One journey he kept mining for years afterwards.

This one's grouped with two other Dürer engravings as his 'Master Prints,' from what I've read — three prints meant to show off everything the medium could do.

This is apparently a working sketch — Velázquez roughing out how a soldier's back and stance might sit before he committed anything to canvas for a much bigger scene.