Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Sale, Paris, Drouot, 26 May 1977, lot 108;
sale, Paris, Christie’s, Une Collection Privée, 22 March 2007, lot 229

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Dessins Vénitiens du XVIIIe siècle, 1983, no. 137  

Drawn on a piece of paper from of a printed book. The paper is very thick and the corrosive ink has blared in places and sunk into the paper, and it is visible at the verso, but it has not created losses. There are two tiny losses to the left of the plate mark towards the left edge. Small surface dirt the drawing is in quite good condition. It is sold in a carved and wooden gilded French frame.
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This unusually large and very handsome study must have been drawn from life; very likely Piranesi used one of his studio assistants as his model.  The artist has used for this drawing a piece of thick paper cut from an illustrated book.  He ingeniously makes use of the edge of an engraved illustration, with its plate mark, which runs down the lower left edge of the sheet, effectively creating the illusion of the end of a table. Around this fixed point Piranesi establishes the position of the man’s body, seen in profile, at work.  The figure's left foot is slightly lifted and resting on top of the other, again balancing the position of the body in a very realistic way.  From the printed lines of text on the verso it appears that Piranesi has here used a fragment from a page of a book describing the ancient tombs located outside the walls of Rome. 

Extremely vibrant and bold in its execution, this is one of the most impressive of all Piranesi's known figure studies.  It is dated by Andrew Robison to the 1760s. The figure is animated with assured parallel lines, which are then reinforced with stronger strokes of ink to emphasise the areas of shadow. These much darker areas are executed with the use of a reed pen and are highly characteristic of Piranesi's vigorous and very individual style.  His skilful and free technique emphasises the contrasting effects of light and shade, accentuating and defining the figure’s movement.  Piranesi also makes masterly use of the white surface of the paper, a skill that he must have learned while in the Tiepolo workshop.  As Hylton Thomas noted, figure studies such as this, with their quick and spontaneous notations of figures 'caught in full and momentary movement', constitute some of Piranesi's most appealing and attractive drawings.¹

Very similar in spirit and execution to the present sheet and dating from the same period is another, with studies of three men, in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.²

1.  H. Thomas, The Drawings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, London 1954, p. 25
2.  ibid., p. 61, no. 74, reproduced fig. 74