This is one of three drawings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo of an unidentified family group posing in a villa garden. The three drawings must have been preparatory for a painted family portrait, but no such painting--or any other portrait of so large a family group--is known to survive. -- Exhibition Label, from "Life Lines: Portrait Drawings from Dürer to Picasso."
This sheet is one of a small number of drawings that depict similar, carefully composed groups of men, women, and children. All presumably were members of the same unidentified aristocratic Venetian family. The drawing belongs to a tradition of family portraiture exemplified in the work of the celebrated sixteenth-century Venetian artist Paolo Veronese, whose paintings Giambattista Tiepolo intensely admired. It may be dated on the basis of style to the late 1750s. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Watermark: Letter A inside shield and possibly another letter in shield. Watermark (transmitted infrared), letter a, shield 142756wm_1997_23_ WM_transmIR.
Harris, Tomás, 1908-1964, former owner.
Heinemann, Rudolf J., former owner.
Heinemann, Lore, former owner.
Aikema, Bernard. Tiepolo and His Circle : Drawings in American Collections. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Art Museum ; New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996, no. 72, repr.