Study of four men's heads

While preparing preliminary drawings for a fresco depicting The Feast of Antony and Cleopatra painted in 1745 in the salon of the Palazzo Labia in Venice, Giambattista Tiepolo freely arranged sketches of three men’s heads and a black boy on a sheet of paper. He depicted each of them in a different view, but all with furrowed brows, entirely concentrated. With a high hat decorated with a jewel in the middle, one of the men is turning his gaze to the right. Another is inclining his bare head in the opposite direction. The third one, wearing spectacles, is looking to the left. A child is shown in the left profile. The man in a cap playing the viola is part of a group of musicians enjoying a feast. In front of him, a boy is serving him, holding a tray with a drink in a bowl. In the background, two other men are staring at a spreadsheet of paper. The man with glasses, holding another rolled paper in his hand, simultaneously is pointing at something on the vault. Presumably, they are all commentators on the unfolding events of which Antony and Cleopatra are the main protagonists.The drawing was made with black and white crayons on thick blue paper produced in Venice with the watermark of the paper mill in the form of three tangential ovals.The drawing is part of a collection of sketches created by the Venetian Tiepolo family in the 18th century. They were found in Szczecin at the beginning of the 20th century and taken to the Soviet Union in the difficult post-war period. Currently, they are possessed by the Cabinet of Graphic Arts of the National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe) in Szczecin.

Ewa Gwiazdowska