Property from a Distinguished European Private Collection
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Five separate figure studies
Auction Closed
January 25, 04:44 PM GMT
Estimate
25,000 - 30,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Distinguished European Private Collection
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Mogliano 1720 - 1778 Rome
Five separate figure studies
All black chalk, on five sheets laid down on one mount
130 by 91 mm; 5⅛ by 3⅝ in.
52 by 34 mm; 2 by 1½ in. (2)
61 by 41 mm; 2½ by 1⅝ in. (2)
(5)
With the Matthiesen Gallery, London, June 1963, exhib. cat., no. 48, pl. XXIV;
Stephen Spector, New York, 1966;
Sven Gahlin, London, 1966;
David Rust, Washington DC, 1960s;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 25 March 1982, lot 59;
Private collection
We are indebted to Andrew Robison for the following information and cataloguing:
'These drawings come from two very different periods. The four small ones, studies of figures on the Roman streets, date from the late 1740s or 1750s, the same years when the widest range of Roman street types populates Piranesi’s etched “Vedute di Roma.” The top two drawings were once side-by-side on the same sheet. The large central drawing dates a decade later, in the mid 1760s. This workman in an interior standing at a plinth or table shows a strikingly similar subject and composition to a swift pen drawing in the Amsterdam Museum.'1
The decorative mounting together of these works was surely by a modern collector, like another sheet with six small figure drawings from a similarly wide but later period (see Christie’s London, 12 April 1983, lot 97).'
1. Ben Koevoets, “Oude tekeningen in het bezit van de Gemeentemusea van Amsterdam: Italië 15e-18e eeuw,” Amsterdam 1976, 34a.
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