Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Mogliano Veneto 1720-1778 Rome)

The present drawing is close in handling to a number of pen drawings from the mid-1760s, such as the Man in profile to the left, sold in these Rooms on 3 July 2007, lot 59. No firm connection is known with any finished work, although a figure in a similar, reversed pose appears in the foreground of Piranesi's etching of the Remains of the so-called Canopus at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, part of his Views of Rome series executed in 1760-78 (J. Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, San Francisco, 1994, no. 223).

The study is executed on part of a proof of the title-page of Piranesi's print series the Trofei di Ottaviano Augusto inalzati per la Vittoria ad Actium, which was first published in 1753. Three figure studies in black chalk, formerly in the collection of Robert van Hirsch, were executed on fragments of another proof of the same etching; one of them, like the present work, is drawn over the printed date 'MDCCLIII.' (H. Thomas, The Drawings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, New York, 1954, nos. 66A, B and C, illustrated).

We are grateful to Dr. Andrew Robison for confirming the attribution on the basis of a digital photograph.