Giovanni Battista Piranesi

We are indebted to Andrew Robison for the following information and cataloguing:

'This standing workman - with rolled sleeves, bare calves, apron, and cap - wears the characteristic dress of printers in Piranesi’s workshop. The sheet was the right half of a large double-sided work. The left half also shows a standing printer, similarly attired, and is now in the collection of Vincent Buonanno, Providence, RI.¹ When the two sheets are rejoined, that completes the rounded bas-relief with lozenge pattern encircled by spiral ribbons, seen in a red chalk sketch on the verso and a more finished pen version on the recto. 

These mouldings study the base of the Column of Marcus Aurelius, related to Piranesi’s etching, Focilon 574e, published July 1775,² giving a good date for the figures: 1773/1775. The standing figures and the mouldings are by Piranesi but the verso in black chalk profile of a bearded man wearing a cloak and cowl, partially visible on the present sheet after the drawing was cut, is not (though possibly by one of his artist children). As the Buonanno drawing comes from a recently discovered early 20th-century collection, the two halves must have been cut apart before that.'

For another sheet with separate studies by Piranesi see lot 49.

1. See, Paul Prouté, Dessins et Estampes du XVIe au XXIe siècle, 2016 (149), no. 19, reproduced

2. Compare the similar etched base for the Column of Trajan, Focillon 553f and 564, published late 1773/1774