Antonio Arrigoni e Giambattista Pittoni: i disegni del capretto immolato

The "Death of Abel", an easel painting ascribed to Aureliano Milani when is recently passed through the art market in Vienna, is here attributed to the Venetian artist Antonio Arrigoni. This revision offers new elements for addressing the question of how to distinguish the latter's drawings from those of Giambattista Pittoni. In particular, this concerns the drawings in the so-called Salvotti Album, whose sheets are divided between the Drawings and Prints Cabinet of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice and the Giuseppe Fiocco collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. What first needs to be understood as one separates these hands is that Pittoni was trained alongside Arrigoni, who was more experienced, a fact only recently revealed by scholarship. Further context is offered by considering their shared creative process, assuming that they both attended figure-drawing classes, probably during the 1720s.