This painting refutes the possibility of finding a black model in Ljubljana, although the so-called Jeran’s Negroes were still roaming the country making their living as beggars and street performers around 1900. Compared to the portrait format of Mulatto (before 1904), this head is a study focused on formal aspects of the work. The model is placed against a window that exposes a sharp contrast of deep shadows produced by counter-light, so popular during the 1890s in Central European painting. Cast in profil perdue, the lost profile, the painter suppressed physiognomic identity of the model. Both challenges − the light and the lost profile − are found earlier in Ferdo Vesel’s work. The format and the squarely laid formal problems define this little canvas as a studio exercise in Ažbe’s school in Munich where Jakopič painted at the time. Just like Mulatto we can safely date this study to the close of the nineteenth century.