Watermark: fleur-de-lis within a circle, surmounted by a crown (similar to Heawood 1639).
Ango numbered among the French artists working in Rome who were not formally associated with the French Academy. As an artist, Ango is primarily known through his drawings, the majority of which are copies after paintings by Italian masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also replicated works by his contemporaries Jean Honore Fragonard and Hubert Robert, and even reworked counterproofs of Robert's drawings. Ango traveled with Fragonard to Naples at the request of the abbé de Saint-Non in March 1761. There they replicated works by old masters; many of these drawn copies were later translated into print by the abbé for his "Recueil de griffonnis, de vues, paysages, fragments antiques et sujets historiques" (Paris, 1755-78).
Inscribed in red ink at lower right edge, "R.o. Novarra. S. Juan. Later".
This large drawing reproduces a fresco by Giovanni Battista Ricci, called Ricci da Novara (c. 1537-1627), in the church of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, which was commissioned as part of the redecoration of the church for the Holy Year of 1600. It is one of several copies Ango produced of works in the Lateran church.
Ricci, Giovanni Battista, After.