Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

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Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
1682-1754
Design for the Frontispiece of Studi di Pittura
ca. 1750-1754
Black chalk on laid paper, on laid paper decorative mount.
10 5/8 x 14 inches (269 x 356 mm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
1961.12:37
Notes: 

Piazzetta was a gifted teacher, and Giovanni Battista Albrizzi published a drawing book that reproduced Piazzettas studies of the human body. This work is a preparatory study for the title page, though without the Latin inscription that appears in the finished work. Piazzetta's drawings for the project were executed during the last decade of his life, and the book itself was not published until 1760, six years after he had died. Here, Piazzetta's portrait is flanked by personifications of Sculpture and Painting. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"

Inscription: 

Inscribed below drawing in black chalk: Piazzetti.

Provenance: 
Sir William Eden, 5th Baronet of Maryland and 7th Baronet of West Auckland, England; Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence; acquired in 1932 by Samuel H. Kress, New York; Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York.
Summary: 

Sculpture and Painting seated below the portrait of Piazzetta.

Associated names: 

Auckland, William Eden, Baron, 1744-1814, former owner.
Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, former owner.
Kress, Samuel H. (Samuel Henry), 1863-1955, former owner.

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