Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

The drawing comes from the album of studies of putti from the Beauchamp Collection which were numbered by a contemporary hand, the highest recorded number being 137. The purpose of the drawings is not known, although, as James Byam Shaw suggested, they may have been made to display 'his virtuosity, like a pianist improvising on his instrument', J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, no. 125. Byam Shaw dated the drawings to after 1770, after Domenico's return from Spain.