Scene with Four Figures of Monks Discoursing

This drawing is similar to several by Piola carried out in brown and white on blue-gray paper, all with the artist's initials identically placed in the upper left corner (for example, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. no. 26083; and Uffizi, Florence, inv. no. 6861). The other drawings are on much wider sheets, however, and each consists of several thematically related vignettes. It is likely that the Four Figures of Monks Discoursing originally belonged to such a composite sketch which was later cut into smaller pieces; it may once have been joined with a similar small sheet of monks in conversation by Piola that is now in the Louvre (inv. no. RF 41 188). Paolo Gerolamo Piola not infrequently monogrammed his own drawings; the letters P. G. P, in the same hand, appear on a Bacchanal in the Uffizi, on a Preaching of the Baptist sold in London (Sotheby's, November 25, 1970, no. 13), and on a Pastoral Subject that was on the London market in 1968 (repr. Old Master Drawings. Yvonne Tan Bunzl, London, 1968, no. 47, pl. 8).