A portrait drawing, probably of Agostino Carracci; full face with close-cropped hair. He wears a fringed collar.

The author of this drawing and the identification of the sitter have been just as controversial as those of the presumed self-portrait of Annibale Carracci, RCIN 902254. While it has been firmly attributed by different scholars to Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico Carracci, the combination of broad tonal effects with meticulous hatching, seen particularly in the modelling of the face, is peculiar to Agostino and reflects his early activity as a reproductive engraver of some note. As for the identity of the sitter, we have fewer certain likenesses of Agostino than we do of Annibale. However, Wittkower drew attention to a red chalk drawing in the Uffizi (inv. 14942-F) that depicts the same sitter in a slightly different pose and bears the early inscription 'Ritratto [portrait] di Agostino Carracci' – not a cast-iron piece of evidence, but not insignificant.

Perhaps more telling is the nature of the depiction, full-face, gazing directly at the viewer, with the head seen from close-to: in this respect the drawing is more typical of a self-portrait than the putative self-portrait of Annibale. As with that drawing, the age of the sitter – here perhaps around twenty – would, if it is a self-portrait by Agostino, place the sheet in the later 1570s, among the earliest known by the artist. We have little knowledge of Agostino's chalk style at that date and in the absence of comparable sheets there is nothing to contradict such an early dating.

As with the portrait of Annibale, the status of the present drawing as a self-portrait would explain its preservation from early in the artist's career. The apparent ages of the sitters in the two drawings date them to the same period and it is not inconceivable that they are a pair of self-portraits executed at exactly the same time, in a spirit of gentle competition – very much the sort of graphic exercise that we associate with this formative, experimental period of the Carracci academy.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016