Watermark: "Bird over ROSA" over letter "V". Watermark, beta radiograph, bird over ROSA, above letter "VF"? 142881wm_1996_133_WM_beta.tiff
Domenico Tiepolo lifted the motif of the chained monkey from his father's vast fresco in the staircase of the palace of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, where the two artists had worked together in the early 1740s. The pair of skeletal monkeys at lower left, however, is the product of the younger artist's imagination. They lend the drawing a bizarre, enigmatic quality consistent with much of his art. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Signed at lower right, in pen and brown ink, "Dom.o Tiepolo".
Harris, Tomás, 1908-1964, former owner.
Heinemann, Rudolf J., former owner.
Heinemann, Lore, former owner.
Stampfle, Felice, and Cara D. Denison. Drawings from the Collection of Lore and Rudolf Heinemann. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1973, no. 115, repr.