* Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid

Library of the Somasco convent at Santa Maria della Salute, Venice;
Count Leopoldo Cicognara;
Antonio Canova;
Thence by inheritance to his half-brother, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori-Canova;
Francesco Pesaro;
By whom sold to Col. Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire;
Thence by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Col. Alfred Capel-Cure, Blake Hall,  
Sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885 (part of lot 1024), to E. Parsons and Sons, London;
With Richard Owen, Paris;
Savile Gallery, London, 1928;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 23 May 1930, lot 69, reproduced;
With Tomas Harris, London, 1930;
Corstius Collection;
Anonymous sale, Geneva, Moos, 27 OCtober 1934, lot 53, reproduced;
A. Stoll (L.2786a)

This drawing is one of a series of at least 76 variations on the theme of the Holy Family, originating from the Savile album, so-called because it first came to light in an exhibition at the Savile Gallery in May 1928.  Tiepolo had given the album to the Somasco Convent in Venice in 1762, before he left for Spain.  It was only after the Cheney sale in 1885 that it was dismembered, some forty drawings (including this one) being bought by the Savile Gallery, and around fifteen by Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi (see J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection: Italian Eighteenth Century Drawings, vol. VI, Metropolitan Museum, New York 1987, p. 104, under cat. no. 78).  The drawings have been dated by George Knox to the period 1754-62: all appear to have been made entirely for their own sake, and are unconnected with any painted projects.  Knox refers to the group as 'exquisite arabesques...the most magnificently sustained testimony to Giambattista's graphic inventiveness' (see G. Knox, Tiepolo: A Bicentenary Exhibition 1770-1970, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1970, under cat. no. 89).