Head of man with his hand over his mouth (Head of thinker)

The drawing by Giambattista Tiepolo is a sketch of a turbaned head of a young, thoughtful boy. The purpose of the work remains a mystery as no painting depicting a young man in such a pose has been found. Such a composition might have been destroyed when Giambattista Tiepolo's work had not yet been thoroughly studied. A similar motif is known from two other works. One is a fresco by Giambattista Tiepolo on an Old Testament theme - The Meeting of Jacob with Rachel and Laban, located in the Archbishop's Palace Gallery in Udine. The second is the altar painting Saint Vincent Ferrer Preaching to the Crowd, created by Giandomenico Tiepolo and hanging in the church of San Polo in Venice. Tiepolo's work is characterised by the repetition of similar motifs, although differing in the placement of figures, features and other details. The drawing was made with black and white crayons on blue paper produced in Venice. It belongs to the group of 36 works by the Tiepolo family, the most extensive Polish collection of drawings by this distinguished and famous 18th-century Venetian artistic family. The complicated fate of the works was established by Georg Knox, an English researcher on the work of the Tiepolo family.

Ewa Gwiazdowska