Is Leonardo da Vinci's "Head of a Young Woman" the greatest drawing ever made? Granted, that may sound like a presumptuous question. Yet both the drawing and its subject — an ethereal young beauty who might easily pass for the Mona Lisa's kid sister or one of the elf-maidens in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy — have had plenty of admirers over the years.

The Renaissance art scholar Bernard Berenson, for example, called it "one of the finest achievements in all draughtsmanship." For the British art historian and occasional PBS host Sir Kenneth Clark, it was a work in which "the balance between natural and ideal beauty is perfectly held."

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Source: http://www.providencejournal.com/