Giovanni Battista Piazzetta - A READING MAN AND OF A BOY - image-1

Lot 1380 Dα

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta - A READING MAN AND OF A BOY

Auction 987 - overview Cologne
19.11.2011, 00:00 - Old Masters
Estimate: 60.000 € - 80.000 €
Result: 72.600 € (incl. premium)

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

A READING MAN AND OF A BOY

Black chalk, heightened wiith white on coloured paper. 40,5 x 31,5 cm.

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, we learn from his contemporaries, was quite a slow painter. We learn from the same sources that already at an early stage, before 1720, he started to create certain drawings in chalk that he sold as autonomous works. This was without doubt necessary in order to bridge the time between a commission and its completion. Piazzetta´s drawings were much sought-after among collectors already at that time. The most beautiful among these belong to the English royal collection and are today in Windsor Castle. Moreover many were printed as engravings. In “Dichtung und Wahrheit” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remembers that as a young man he copied engravings by Piazzetta in order to exercise his drawing skills.
In the Venetian art of the settecento, Piazzetta´s Teste are often seen as pendants of Rosalba Carriera´s pastels in colours. But while her style can be characterized as aristocratic, Piazzetta´s models for these drawings were found in his own family or on the streets and squares of Venice. Thereby, he achieves in these monochrome works the same lively contrast of light and dark as in his paintings.

George Knox was able to identify our drawing with a sheet that was auctioned in 1920. It has not appeared on the market since then.

Certificate

George Knox, 31.3.2007.

Provenance

Sotheby´s 1920. - Charles Férault Collection, Biarritz (George Knox, 31.3.2007).

Literature

About Piazzetta´s drawings cf. the exhibition catalogue: Piazzetta. A Tercentenary Exhibition of Drawings, Prints and Books. Edited by George Knox National Gallery of Washington 1983.