Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

René de Cérenville, Lausanne

R. Pallucchini, Piazzetta, Milan 1956, fig. 119

Laid down on light japan paper. there is a tear repaired to the left side on top of the length of the hand of the boy not visible from the recto and a small one to the left a bit over the shoulder. Paper still light grey-blue, it must have faded somehow but still retains a bluish tint, contrary to the image in the catalogue, where the paper appears burned. Above the area of the hand till the face of the boy there is some slight staining. Black and white chalk still strong. Sold mounted and framed in a wooden gilded modern frame.
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Piazzetta's reputation as a talented and brilliant draughtsman was established chiefly on the basis of studies such as this, which became known as 'teste di carattere'.  His patrons and biographers often lamented his slowness in completing his paintings, but it seems he was able to produce very quickly these distinctive, finished and pictorial drawings, which became an important source of income for him, from early in his career.  Generally representing heads or half-length figures, executed on large sheets of bluish paper, these impressive studies soon became extremely popular with collectors and connoisseurs of Piazzetta's own time, and remain so today.  They were conceived as works of art in their own right, to be framed and hung on the wall among paintings.

The present drawing, done from life, portrays Piazzetta’s eldest son Giacomo, born in December 1725.  The artist frequently made drawings of members of his own family, not so much as specific portraits but as images of ordinary people, and his drawings of this type often depict two or three such figures together.  In this example, however, we see the artist's son as a young boy, on his own, gazing to his right and holding a book by its corner in his right hand.  Giacomo must have been one of Piazzetta's favourite models, and appears in several other surviving drawings, perhaps the most notable of which are Giacomo feeding a dog, in the Chicago Art Institute, and Giacomo as an ensign, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (where the boy seems to be slightly older than in this drawing).¹  Two other drawings, both showing Giacomo in a very similar pose holding a book, though open rather than closed, are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and in the British Museum, London.²  In the latter Giacomo appears to be slightly older.  The evidence of the ages of identified sitters can be important in dating Piazzetta's 'teste di carattere', as he seems to have executed these works for much of his career, from the 1720s on, without any significant changes in style or handling.  

Speaking of the artist's technique in these remarkable works, Alice Binion observed ‘..the extraordinary tactility of the figures was obtained by his singular technique of modelling by smudging the chalk instead of using hatching’,³ a technique which creates a subtle sfumato effect full of nuances, like that of a painter in pastels.  Nowhere in Piazzetta's drawn oeuvre is this technical brilliance more evident than in his teste di carattere, which are rightly the best known and most admired of all the artist's drawings.

¹ Art Institute of Chicago inv. no. 1971-326; Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. WA 1934.266; see G. Knox, G.B. Piazzetta. Disegni - Incisioni - Libri - Manoscritti, Vicenza 1983, pp. 32-33, no. 44, reproduced fig. 44 and p. 36, no. 55, reproduced fig. 55

² Windsor: inv. no. 0774; British Museum: inv. nos. 1875-8-14-1184; A. Blunt, Venetian Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries, in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London 1957, p. 28, no. 30 

³ The Glory of Venice, exhib. cat., London, Royal Academy, and Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1994, p. 148