Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Piranesi executed numerous figure studies in various media.  He was fascinated with movement and the majority of his drawings demonstrate figures in action.  Hylton Thomas observed that figures represented on the same sheet were rarely connected to one another and likened Piranesi's approach to the way Watteau worked by building up a repertoire of figural motifs which could later be borrowed for compositions.¹

The figures depicted here are stylistically close to the four studies that surround the central figure in a sheet sold in these Rooms, 25 March 1982, lot 59.

1.  H. Thomas, The Drawings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, London 1954, p.26