Giuseppe Piattoli

With David Jones, Paris; acquired 1998

Generally in good condition. Foxing on the verso and slightly visible on the recto. Image in the catalogue is quite yellow, drawing in the original is much stronger.
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Piattoli is known for his very charming drawings of genre scenes and his illustrations of proverbs, but also made many drawings of battle scenes and mythological subjects.  Like this one, they are animated, multi-figure compositions, energetically drawn with pen and wash.  Ugo Ruggieri has noted that Piattoli's his drawings of this type were frequently attributed to Sebastiano Ricci.¹

The subject of the present sheet seems to be the death of Jezebel, as told in II Kings 9, 30-37.  Jezebel, a worshipper of Baal, was the wife of Ahab, King of Israel. When the warrior Jehu attacked Ahab's capital, she taunted him from a window and he ordered her to be thrown down to the street, where she was trampled to death by horses and eaten by dogs.

1. See Ugo Ruggieri, 'Drawings by Giuseppe Piattoli', Master Drawings, vol. XVI, no. 4 (Winter 1978), pp. 414-18, pls 27-37