Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The studies on the verso are characteristic of Piranesi's figures, which may be drawn in red or black chalk or pen and ink.  They appear as staffage throughout his prints, so it would be difficult to connect these with a specific work.

The head on the recto is less familiar in type and approach, although the handling of the pen and ink and the energetic shading with parallel lines are characteristic.  A comparable example, a sheet of figure studies, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library¹. The rather loose and less angular treatment would, however, suggest an early date, in the 1740s.  Something of the exuberant rounded style can be seen in other drawings by Piranesi dated to this period, for example the Gondola now in the Pierpont Morgan Library.²  Piranesi returned to Venice for about a year around 1743 and it is generally considered that this was immensely important to his development.  John Wilton-Ely writes '...the remarkable transformation in his range of expression in terms of draughtsmanship, etching technique and expression by the later 1740s undoubtedly stems from this fresh contact with his native environment.'³ It seems that he was influenced by Canaletto and the Riccis and especially by Tiepolo.  In fact, this head is strongly reminiscent of figures in works by Tiepolo, in its position and sharp profile and wavey hair and even its morphology which recalls his early works.  It may, therefore, be a very unusual survival of Piranesi's studying a contemporary master. 

1. See F. Stampfle, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 1978, p. XXXI, no. 122, reproduced

2. See Stampfle, op. cit., p. XXII, no. 10, reproduced

3. J. Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, London 1978, p. 17