This charcoal is by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754). I find the portrait to have a special kind of power. The young man is looking directly into our eyes from his profiled position, almost condemning us for our voyeurism. He possesses all of the brash insolence of youth; the exuberant suffering that appears as a soft kind of brooding. Only a great artist can create life out of charcoal — and this is certainly such an instance.