This characterful drawing of three musicians was made by Antonio Zucchi whilst he was resident in London. Zucchi was born in Venice, the son of Francesco Zucchi an engraver. He trained with Pietro Amigoni in Venice, where he practiced as a history painter, being elected a member of the Accademia di Pittore e Scultore in 1759. Zucchi seems first to have met James Adam in 1760 when he is recorded visiting Pola with James and his drawing-master, Clérisseau. In 1763 Zucchi painted an impressive portrait, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, of James Adam surrounded by classical sculpture and a model of a capital from ‘the British order’, which James had designed for a projected new parliament building. James, on the eve of his departure from Italy, tried to persuade Zucchi, whom he described in a letter home as ‘a worthy honest lad, a most singular character’, to join the Adam office in London.
In 1766 Zucchi did travel to London with his brother Giuseppe to work for the Adams. Zucchi became the chief decorative painter producing illustrations from Homer and Virgil for ceilings, arabesque work and most impressively, large landscape capriccios. This drawing belongs to a small group of figure studies Zucchi worked on in Britain. Whilst the drawing is probably only a generic depiction of music making, rather than a specific portrait group, the study is of interest because it shows a viol being played standing, as was the fashion at this date. Zucchi was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1770 and designed the frontispiece for The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam (1773). There is some evidence that Zucchi’s drawings were popular amongst collectors during the eighteenth century.