Bust of a Man (Saint Matthias?)
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta Italian
Not on view
This bearded man with an axe may be identified as Matthias, the last of the apostles, chosen to take the place of Judas after his betrayal of Christ. It probably comes from one of several series of apostles’ heads devised by Piazzetta and widely disseminated when engraved by Marco Pitteri. The French artist Fragonard is known to have admired Pitteri’s engravings after Piazzetta’s apostles when he encountered them in a Venetian printshop in 1774.
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