A sculptural group of Saint Joseph holding the Christ Child, two boys reaching up at his feet

The sheet has a long and prestigious provenance. In the 18th Century, it was in the collection of the Florentine Francesco Niccoló Maria Gabburri who added the inscription on the verso and who dedicated to the artist a biography in his manuscript Vite di Pittori. Subsequently, the drawing was in Sir Joshua Reynolds’ collection. Puget's art would be particularly inspiring for later generations of artists, so much so that in the sale catalogue of the Reynolds’ collection the sculptor is referred to as the ‘French Michel-Angelo’ (A. C. de Poggi, A Catalogue of the First Part of the Cabinet of Ancient Drawings which belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1794, p. 42).