One of a series of 108 drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo from an album bearing the title, "TIEPOLO DESSINS ORIGINAUX", inscribed by Edward Cheney, "E.C. Venice 1852 May 31 / bought from the Conte Corniani Algarotti".
The female figure seated on the right in this drawing corresponds very closely to that of Bacchus's companion Ariadne in the oil sketch that Giambattista Tiepolo created in anticipation of beginning work on the frescoed ceiling of the gallery of the Palazzo Clerici, Milan. Because the proportions of the fresco are very different from those of the related oil sketch (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), the artist had to rethink the composition and many of its constituent parts. The figure in this drawing does not appear in the finished work. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Regarding the drawings for Palazzo Clerici, at the Morgan and elsewhere, see William Barcham, Tiepolo's Pictorial Imagination: Drawings for Palazzo Clerici (New York, Morgan Drawing Institute, 2017).
Algarotti, Francesco, conte, 1712-1764, former owner.
Algarotti, Bonomo, 1706-1776, former owner.
Algarotti-Corniani, Maria, former owner.
Corniani, Bernardino, conte, former owner.
Cheney, Edward, 1803-1884, former owner.
Cure, Alfred Capel, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1867-1943, former owner.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, IV, 127.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Drawings from New York Collections III, The 18th Century in Italy, 1971, p. 47, no. 80, repr.