Lorenzo Quaglio I

In this working drawing, Quaglio sketched an elevation of a city square and added a rough ground plan of the theater stage, seen from above, at the top of the sheet. The artist’s numerical annotations give a sense of how the painted flats would have been positioned on the stage. Along the lower margin, Quaglio made ruled measurements that would have helped him devise the scene for the stage’s dimensions; the measurements also would have facilitated his transferring the design to a more polished drawing (now in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence) and, ultimately, to a painted set.

Lorenzo Quaglio I (1730–1804)
A City Square with Buildings on a Hill in the Background, ca. 1760–70
Pen and brown ink, over graphite
Gift of Mrs. Donald M. Oenslager; 1982.75:523