Attributed to Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Drawing was an essential part of the artistic practice of Venice’s leading 18th-century painters, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his son Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Both kept albums of drawings bound by theme or subject, which were retained in the family studio as a repertoire that could be used in later commissions. This sheet may be grouped with a number of chalk head studies of the same young man by the elder Tiepolo, although the handling of the chalk and emphasis on surface is more closely related to his son’s approach to drawing.