Mattia Jona, Master Drawings and Prints, Japanese Prints - Piazzetta Guastalla 5, 20122 Milan, Italy, tel (+39) 02 8053315

GIUSEPPE PIATTOLI (Florence, active 1785-1807) LAOCOON
Pen and brown ink, washed in brown, 265 x 325 mm.
Attributed in the past to Marco Marcuola, this sheet is in fact a powerful example of the drawings by Piattoli in the Venetian late Baroque style. See Ugo Ruggeri, 'Drawings by Giuseppe Piattoli', in 'Master Drawings', XVI, 1978. Other examples of this kind of drawings by Piattoli, which have a deceptively Venetian eighteenth-century air, are in the Biblioteca Comunale of Forli, and in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Giuseppe Piattoli was professor of drawing at the Florentine Academy from 1785 until 1807. He produced drawings for series of prints, the most noteworthy being those of 'Marfisa' and the two series of 'Proverbi', engraved by Lasinio, the first series in 1786, the second in 1788.