# Five Grotesque Heads

- By: Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734–1802)
- Date: 1750–1800
- Medium: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk
- Classification: Drawing
- Dimensions: Sheet: 29.5 x 20.2 cm (11 5/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Gift of Frederick M. Mayer
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1969.277)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/cma/1969.277/1969.277_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

From an early age, Gaetano Gandolfi was admired for his drawings, many of which were created as independent works of art and avidly collected by Italian and British patrons. This drawing is one of Gandolfi’s so-called teste pittoriche, or pictorial heads. Devised by the artist in the 1770s, this genre is based on contemporary academic theories that proposed that human emotions could be scientifically classified by facial expressions.