Giovanni Battista Piranesi

This quick study for proposed changes to the choir of San Giovanni in Laterano seems to reflect an early idea to expand the pedimented aedicule of the choir wall, eliminating the square panel seen above it in most sketches, and to use a window rather than a medallion in the curving apse. The putti, drawn with the paper turned 180 degrees, do not relate to any of the design schemes seen in the Morgan drawings, but they likely correspond to the angels with garlands and banderoles found in a number of related drawings at Columbia University's Avery Library. Another drawing at the Morgan, inv. 1966.11:110, was once joined to this sheet.