This drawing, innovative and animated, can be compared with several sheets by the artist, similar in size and featuring three or four nude figures, male or female. Within these works one finds a skillful use of cross-hatching and line. This manner is reminiscent of Pietro Novelli, and has often been attributed to him as done in the early part of his career. However, in 1954 James Byam Shaw definitively attributed these studies to Fontebasso.




The similarities that exist between the figures, in addition to their use of line and cross-hatching, can be observed through the small red chalk lines that accentuate the musculature of the bodies. Most notably this can be found in Three studies of athletes (Mr. Magrini, Francesco Fontebasso, I Disegni, 1990, No. 73, p.359), where a pink wash of colour surrounds all of the figures. Furthermore, Fontebasso’s religious work of the period, such as The Fall of the Rebel Angels (Vienna, Albertina), is comparable to this drawing in its similar treatment (M. Magrini, op.cit, No. 60, p.354).



The later and erroneous inscription, naming a seventeenth-century artist of the Lombard barochetto, Andrea Lanzani, should not be taken into account.