Head of a young boy

This study of the head of a young boy was originally part of a large group of fantastic heads by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo that were assembled in an album. The story of the album and of the dispersal of its contents (a group of 67 drawings on the theme of The Holy Family and over 90 studies of heads), now scattered in numerous public and private collections, was reconstructed by George Knox (J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, VI, Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, under no. 78). All of the heads in the group are executed on sheets of approximately the same size and in the same technique of pen and brown ink and brown wash over light traces of black chalk. Several of the drawings appear still to be mounted on the pages of the album as is the case with the present drawing.

The subjects depicted range from old, bearded men to young boys, and some characters wear elaborate headgear while others sport voluminous collars. The figures are not connected with Giovanni Battista’s paintings, but several of them were etched by his son Giovanni Domenico (see G. Knox, Raccolta di Teste, Udine, 1970, passim).