Pietro Antonio Novelli

The virtuosic penwork of this drawing is characteristic of sheets by Novelli, who studied with Gaspare Diziani and was one of the leading painters and illustrators in Venice at the end of the eighteenth century. The neat calligraphy of the inscription, Pierantonio Novelli Veneziano, is identical to that on more than a hundred other drawings that presumably belonged to the same anonymous collector, known to modern scholars as "the Reliable Venetian Hand" on account of the accuracy of his attributions. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"