Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Design for a Wall Panel with Shields and a Winged Female Figure Verso: Sketch for a Table(?)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
1720-1778

Design for a Wall Panel with Shields and a Winged Female Figure Verso: Sketch for a Table(?)

ca. 1746-1747
12 13/16 x 14 3/4 inches (325 x 375 mm)
Pen and brown-black ink and wash, over black chalk, on laid paper; verso: pen and brown ink.
1966.11:12

Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan.

Notes
Watermark: bow and arrow. Briquet 738. Same as watermark on 1966.11:9 and 1966.11:10 and 1966.11:11.
For financial reasons, the young Piranesi evidently had to return to his native Venice from Rome in the mid-1740s. While he was there, he is recorded as having designed interior decorations for the palaces of "some Venetian senators and noblemen." This drawing, with its rococo lightness of touch, may have been a study for a work of this type. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Associated names
Morgan, Jane Norton, 1868-1925, former owner.
Morgan, Junius Spencer, 1892-1960, former owner.
Morgan, Henry S. (Henry Sturgis), 1900-1982, former owner.
Bibliography
Denison, Cara, Myra Nan Rosenfeld, and Stephanie Wiles. Exploring Rome : Piranesi and His Contemporaries. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library; Montrǎl : Centre Canadien d'Architecture, 1993, no. 22, repr.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department