Jean-Robert Ango

[1][2] Most biographical information on Ango comes to us through his friend Jean-Antoine Julien, a French painter.

Most of his surviving drawings are of notable paintings and decorations in Roman churches and palaces; however, some attest a knowledge of Naples.

In fact, on March 18, 1761, Ango and Jean-Honoré Fragonard were given permission to draw copies of the artwork in the gallery of Capodimonte, in Naples.

[1][2] Ango recorded in drawing the paintings in Bailli de Breteuil's collection in Rome, who, as mentioned, was his second and only other patron besides Richard, and an ambassador of the Order of Malta to the Holy See from 1758 to 1780.

In fact, in 1772, in a letter to the Flemish painter Andries Cornelis Lens, Julien, Ango's contemporary, referred to an attack of apoplexy that had left Ango half-paralyzed (the term apoplexy once referred to what today is called a stroke).

[1][2] Interest for Ango and his oeuvre was renewed when four of his albums came into possession of the Copper Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

The albums comprise 151 drawings, all executed in red chalk, on an average size of 215 x 148 mm.

These drawings are valuable in that they record the state of paintings and sculptures in Rome in the late 18th century.