Leonardo sketched countless grotesque heads, as a counterpoint to his investigations into ideal beauty. Here a fierce old man faces a vain old woman, her hair pulled back and her bodice laced so tightly that her breasts bulge out. Her right hand is held to the man’s chin in a romantic gesture, and thus Leonardo turned them into a pair of aged lovers, a parody of the opposed profiles of married couples that was one of the standard modes of fifteenth-century portraiture.