Studies of an Old Man and a Youth (Salai?) in Profile, Facing each Other

Two heads in red chalk lean toward one another, almost touching. On the left an old man, hawk-nosed and heavy-jawed, the face Leonardo reached for whenever he wanted age and hard living. On the right a beautiful youth with a fall of curls, the profile many scholars connect to Salai, the boy who came into Leonardo's household as a servant and pupil around 1490 and stayed for decades. In his own notes Leonardo called him a liar and a thief, and kept him anyway. Placing a ruined old face beside a perfect young one was a habit of his, a way of reading beauty by holding its opposite right up against it. Drawn around 1500, the sheet is worked almost entirely in red chalk, a softer material he had lately come to favour for the warmth it gave to skin.