GIOVANNI BATTISTA PITTONI (attr. to) (Venice, 1687 - 1767) Head Study Oil on canvas, 46X35.7 cm Provenance: Milan, private collection Due to its pictorial sprezzatura and illustrative style, the painting well evokes Venetian character heads and the influence of Sebastiano Ricci's examples, as well as a contiguity with the works of Francesco Fontebasso and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Hence, these clues suggest attribution to Giovanni Battista Pittoni whose style, beginning with a vague Jordanian flavour, reveals an early approach to the manner of Piazzetta, perceptible in the Supplizio di San Tomaso in the Venetian church of San Stae. It was, however, the robust modelling of Sebastiano Ricci and the luminous colour of Giambattista Tiepolo that marked his stylistic trait, which Pallucchini defined in 1951 as: 'that bursting Pittonian cheerfulness: boldly lively and minute at the same time, which, without reaching a profound figurative emotion, has its own pictorial coherence'. The scholar, in fact, traced the increasingly agitated, melodramatic and theatrical pictorial mimicry, which is based on the most subtle physiognomic motions, fleeting profiles and snapping hands in a tight game capable of creating a plastic and narrative sense also by virtue of continuous drawing experimentation. And how exemplary, following Pallucchini's thoughts (who in turn paraphrased Zanetti when he described Pittoni as having 'an original style of his own, full of picturesque quirks, gentility and amenity') is the head presented here. Reference bibliography: F. Zava Boccazzi, Pittoni. L'opera completa, Venice 1979, ad vocem