Head of man (Head of old man in profile; Head of halberdier)

Giambattista Tiepolo's drawing is a sketch of an older man's head seen in profile. The man is shown very naturally. Horizontal wrinkles crisscross his forehead, his temples show thick veins, and the bags under his eyes indicate fatigue, although his gaze is sharp. The fleshy, elongated nose falling over a sagging uncut moustache and beard indicates the Semitic origin of the portrayed person. The man is wearing a high cap with buttons sewn in a vertical row over his forehead.The drawing is a sketch for the figure of the palace guard shown on the narrow vertical fresco created on the right side of the composition depicting The Feast of Antony and Cleopatra painted on the wall of the Palazzo Labia salon in Venice in 1745. The sketch was made with black and white crayons on blue handmade paper produced in Venice. The study of the head was secondarily used by Giambattista's son, Giandomenico Tiepolo, in a design for an etching in the Raccolta di Teste (Collection of Heads) series II, published around 1770.

Ewa Gwiazdowska