Antonio Molinari (Venice 1655-1704)

The rapid chalk underdrawing and the free and fluid pen work, worked up in red wash, are characteristic of Molinari's drawings. Until Richard Green's article on a group of Molinari drawings in Düsseldorf, published in 1984, Molinari was fairly unknown as a draughtsman ('Molinari Drawings in Düsseldorf', Master Drawings, XXII, 1984, no. 2, pp. 194-205, plates 29a-41). Two years after this article, Catherine Monbeig Goguel published a group of 40 Molinari drawings in the Louvre, a number of which are stylistically close to the present sheet ('Drawings by Antonio Molinari in the Louvre', Master Drawings, XXIII, 1986, no. 2, pp. 232-41, plates 40-51).