Watermark: letter "B".
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".
Upper corners diagonally cropped.
This characteristically sketchy sheet, datable not long before the artist's departure for Madrid, presents an alternative interpretation of the same theme as another sheet (inv. IV, 114), also in the Morgan's collection. Both may have been created as studies for a lost canvas that Giambattista Tiepolo painted in Venice during the late 1750s for the ceiling of an unknown building in St. Petersburg, Russia. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
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, 115.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Drawings from New York Collections III, The 18th Century in Italy, 1971, p. 63, no. 143, repr.