

We are grateful to Andrew Robison who dates this drawing to the mid-1760s, relating it closely to two further pen drawings of standing gentlemen, similarly dressed, the first of which appeared on the London art market in 19851 and the second of which is today in a private collection, Montreal.2
Robison also notes that the formal calligraphic address on the verso of the present work could well have been written by Piranesi himself.
1. Sale, London, Christie's, 12 December 1985, lot 318
2. see From the Hands of the Masters: A Private Collection, exhib. cat., Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, 2013, p. 81, no. 62, reproduced