Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)

Knox in his 1961 article dates the drawing to the 1740s (Knox, op. cit., p. 275). The composition is similar though in reverse to Tiepolo's altarpiece of the same subject in the church of S. Massimo in Padua and dated to the early 1740s by Morassi (A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, New York, 1962, p. 38, fig. 45). Another painting, formerly in the collection of the Earl of Warwick, of the same subject but with the figure in a slightly different pose was sold at Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1997, lot 93 (Morassi, op. cit., p. 67, fig. 185). However, the drawing is more likely an independent work or Tiepolo's exploration of a compositional idea rather than a study for a specific painting or fresco.