Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Augustine of Hippo: a bozzetto

This bozetto and its pendant, depicting Saints Matthew and Gregory the Great (the latter bequeathed by Oswald Kutschera-Woborsky to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna in 1920), were painted in preparation for a decorative scheme of the Four Evangelists and Four Latin Fathers of the Church in Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach's Chapel of the Electors in the Cathedral of Breslau, built in 1716, when Silesia was under Austrian rule. Otto Benesch was the first to recognise the connection between the bozzetti and the fresco decoration at Breslau, executed between 1721 and 1726. A wash drawing for the cupola decoration is in the British Museum.