Venus and Cupid with other Figures before an Altar

Watermark: in transmitted light, through mount, Letters "AL" in double circle.
Drawings often show the signs of their collecting history, revealing how they were manipulated or modified by earlier owners. Past -- and present -- collectors have often chosen to mark their sheets with a stamp or numbers. Pierre-Jean Mariette had his own personal device, visible in the lower left corner of this drawing. His mark consists of a stamp, applied in black ink, with the collector's Latin initials -- P(etrus) I(oannes) M(ariette) -- interlaced in a circle. This study also bears, at the lower right, a handwritten number indicating it came from the collection of Pierre Crozat (1665-1740). -- Exhibition Label, from "Pierre-Jean Mariette and the Art of Collecting Drawings."
Sebastiano Ricci played a crucial role in reorienting Venetian painting, which in the seventeenth century had been dominated by foreign artists, toward a new, painterly grand manner inspired by such earlier masters as Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). Ricci's works are distinguished by their bright colors and flickering brushwork. In the eighteenth century, this drawing, which may have been made about 1700, belonged to the great French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774), who personally knew and wrote about the artist. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"