Head of boy with his eyes closed

The drawing by Giambattista Tampo depicts a bowed head of a young person who is closing her eyes as if she is about to fall asleep. It was initially thought to be a likeness of a woman because of the soft oval of the face and the delicate features. Such was the sketch titled – The Head of a Young Woman. With time, the figure depicted in the sketch was linked with Rinaldo from Torquato Tasso's poem La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Liberated) of 1581, telling the love story of the pagan witch Armida and a Christian knight participating in the Crusade under Godfried of Bouillon. The image in Giambattista's drawing was considered the sleeping Rinaldo, but a comparison of the sketch with the paintings shows no similarity. The analysis of the drawing and the head of Jacob in the fresco Jacob’s Dream located in the gallery of the Archbishop's Palace in Udine does not come closer to solving this problem. Based on the similarity of the facial features to the personification of Justice on the design for the composition Allegory of Justice and Peace made in 1724, now stored in the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam, we can presume that it may indeed be a female head. Nonetheless, it should be noted that there are essential differences between the sketch and the painting. The drawing was executed using black and white crayons on blue Venetian paper with a watermark in the form of two tangential ovals. The artist drew a hand with folded fingers on the verso (the back of the sheet of paper). The sketch is part of the collection of 36 works created by members of the Tiepolo family held at the National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe) in Szczecin.

Ewa Gwiazdowska