A sanguine pencil sketch of Monsieur Maestracci who was a Corsican sculptor that lived in Bargemon at the same time as my mother. This portrait was probably copied from the painting she did of the sculptor.

My mother drew this particular sketch in sanguine pencil because we had had a discussion on the use and merits of this particular colour of pencil as it was very popular with Leonardo da Vinci in whose work I was very interested. The next time I visited she presented me with this sketch so I could see how it worked so effectively in rendering portraits with just the right subject.

Sanguine comes from the old French for “blood-red” and was traditionally made from iron oxide (rust), oil and clay. It’s use dates from before the invention of the traditional wood encased graphite or “lead” pencil in 1560. Leonardo (1452 – 1519) was probably using the equivalent of sanguine crayons. Just don’t ask me how it also came to mean “marked by eager hopefulness in the face of an apparently bad or difficult situation.”