A man with goitre. Chalk drawing by J. de Ribera.

"This is a rare preparatory drawing for one of Ribera's etchings, the 'Large grotesque head' of about 1622 ... The head faces left while in the print it appears in reverse. The main features of the head presumably made from the life -- the goitre, the heavy lower lip, the large nose, deep-set eye and heavy brows -- are very similar but not identical to the etching, suggesting that for the print he either returned to the model, or more likely worked imaginatively on the copper plate with his needle using this drawing as his guide. The shape of the goitre is different as is the position of the moles; there is no starched collar in the drawing and the peak of the Phrygian bonnet does not turn back on itself a second time as in the print, nor does it have an earflap or the inner cap visible along his forehead. The head in the print is about a third bigger than in the drawing, and it is much more elaborately worked up. Certain other elements are common to both. The concentric curves of wrinkles rippling away from the man's mouth and the type of intense hatching around the temple and below the cheekbone are quite closely paralleled in the etching. ... Curiously Ribera does not seem to have represented people afflicted by goitres in his paintings."--Finaldi, loc. cit.