Metz (Conrad Martin)

original drawing of a beardless young man with curly hair, looking upwards with a devotional gaze, probably for a saintly or apostolic character to be incorporated into a religious figure group as appear in many of Metz’s engravings after Raphael, Carracci, Caravaggio, Parmagianino, Michelangelo and others. Conrad Metz (1749-1827) was born in Bonn, but moved to London to study at the Royal Academy, where he bcame a pupil of one of the founder members, Francesco Bartolozzi. It was under him that Metz became a highly proficient engraver of classical and religious subjects, eventually moving to Rome (where he died) where he undertook the hugely ambitious project of producing a large-scale engraving in fifteen plates of Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgement’,

red chalk drawing, 205 x 170 mm. (8 x 6 3/4 in), signed with initials centre right, laid on a contemporary washed and lined support sheet, signed Metz and dated 1792 on verso, faint exposure lines towards image edges,