Etching. A fine, rich impression in black ink on thick and soft wove paper. Signed in pen and black ink Piero Marussig.
To the platemark 116 x 93 mm, the entire sheet measuring 348 x 250 mm.
Another impression of this etching is kept in the Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Milan

Piero Marussig's work as an etcher has been little researched. There is no such thing as a 'catalogue raisonné', but some relevant remarks were made by Raffaele De Grada in 1970. Praising the artist's passion for etching and his skills, De Grada noted how Marussig avoided the decorative influences of Art Nouveau in his prints, drawing instead on German engravers such as Menzel and Slevogt. De Grada particularly praised Marussig's etching portraits, noting how they harked back to the classical tradition after the sentimentality of late nineteenth-century portraiture. See: Raffaele de Grada Piero Marussig, in Seconda Biennale internationale della grafica, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 1970; pp. 69-70.

in 2012 I personally did a survey of all the etchings by Marussig kept in Milan in the Bertarelli collection.
The Civic collection of prints Achille Bertarelli, in Milan, retains 29 different etchings by the artist, 8 of them in duplicate. Possibly the 29 prints are not the complete corpus of the artist's etchings, but certainly they are the biggest part of it. Most of the prints by Marussig in the Bertarelli collection are portraits (24), but there are also two landscapes, one ex libris, a small etching of a sleeping dog and a satirical etching depicting a miser in the face of Death.
Marussig worked with etching, drypoint and in a few cases used the roulette to give tone to his prints. It is interesting to note the provenance of the prints, which entered the collection through two purchases from the artist's widow. Through the first purchase (September 1938; no. 1583) the Bertarelli collection acquires from the widow and from the printer Fusetti 29 etchings. They all are printed on the same wove paper with black or sepia ink and certainly constitute and edition issued by the printer Fusetti, just after the death of Marussig. Through the second purchase (November 1945; no. 1847) 9 etchings are purchased from Marussig's widow. I have checked 8 of them, and they all are earlier impressions, often signed in pen or pencil by the artist.
The conclusions of my survey were that the impressions of Marussig etchings made by the artist himself are rare. On the other hand, posthumous impressions made by his wife are more common. These conclusions were confirmed by a subsequent survey of the 14 examples of Marussig etchings preserved in the Davoli collection in Reggio Emilia.