A draped male figure, facing left, his right arm outstretched

The Cremonese artist Antonio Maria Viani was invited by Vincenzo Gonzaga to Mantua to work as a court painter. Although he had worked for some time in Munich, it is in Mantua that Viani spent most of his career. In 1595 he was promoted to the role of supervisor of all the architectural and decorative programs for the court in Mantua and outside.

Viani was a fine draftsman and a large group of his works, many comparable in style and technique to the present sheet, are in the Regional Museum in Teplice, coming from two albums once owned by the Clary-Aldringen family (G. Bora and M. Zlatohlávek, I segni dell’arte: il Cinquecento da Praga a Cremona, exhib. cat., Cremona, Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, 1997, pp. 398-431).