Head of high priest

The drawing by Giambattista Tiepolo shows a clergyman's head covered with a mitre decorated with precious stones. The sketch shows from above a stern, ascetic face of an older man, surrounded by a luxuriant beard. It is not known what composition this sketch was used for. The type of head captured on it can also be found in several compositions by the artist's son, Giandomenico. A similar depiction, differing in details such as the shape of the mitre and the form of the jewel above the forehead, was used by Giandomenico in 1780 on the work entitled The Circumcision of Christ from the Great Series of the Bible, sketched in pen and ink and watercolour.Giambattista made the drawing with black and white crayons on blue Venetian paper with the watermark of the paper mill, depicting a coat of arms on an oval background surmounted by a ball and a lily. On the verso, that is the reverse side of the sheet of paper, he sketched the profile of a man with bushy eyebrows. The drawing is one of 36 works created by the 18th-century Venetian Tiepolo family. The complicated fate of the works of the talented and famous Tiepolo family artists was established by the English researcher Georg Knox. The drawings went from Italy to Germany, to the Bavarian court painter in Munich, then to Württemberg, and finally to Szczecin. Today, after the perturbations of the Second World War, they are housed in the Cabinet of Graphic Arts of the National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe) in Szczecin.

Ewa Gwiazdowska