Fig. 1 Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Two Hunters, red chalk over traces of pencil, 32 x 24 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg © Alamy

This painting repeats the top half of an upright design that exists in two drawings by Piazzetta (State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (inv. no. ОР-5022; fig. 1);1 and The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), which was also engraved. An autograph painting which depicts the young man holding the gun and the dog, in oval format, was last recorded in the Cailleux collects ion, Paris.2

The composition was clearly popular and is known in at least two other versions of the same format as the present work (private collects ion, Toronto;3 and exhibited Milan, San Paolo Converso, Antologia di Dipinti Antichi, October–November 1987, no. 54). They were perhaps intended as overdoors. Another painting, with several other figures in addition to those found in the present work, is attributed to Piazzetta's pupil, Egidio Dall'Oglio (1705–1784).4









1 https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collects ion/02.+drawings/246043

2 http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/69932/Piazzetta% 20Giovanni%20Battista%2C%20Giovane%20cacciatore

3 R. Palluchini and A. Mariuz, L'opera completa di Piazzetta, Milan 1982, p. 77, under cat. no. 12.

4 R. Palluchini, in Giambattista Piazzetta. Il suo tempo, la sua scuola, exh. cat., Venice 1983, p. 32, reproduced p. 31.