Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

The present sheet belongs to a series of drawings showing satyrs and centaurs, works described by James Byam Shaw as 'the most delightful and original of all Domenico's allegorical and mythological subjects' (J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, p. 41). It is extremely close both in size and spirit to the drawing of Neptune, Amphitrite and Time with a Nereid, sold in these Rooms on 6 July 2004, lot 80. There are also two very similar drawings, also representing satyrs, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (J. Byam Shaw, The Robert Lehman Collection: Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, nos. 140-1).