An angel seated on a cloud seen di sotto in su

One of Giambattista's famous series of figures seen from below which originally formed part of an album entitled Sole Figure per Soffitti. The album was one of three bought by the dealer Parsons in 1914 and afterwards split and sold individually. These three albums had previously been among the nine albums bought by Edward Cheney in Venice between 1842 and 1852. Professor Knox, in his analysis of two of the nine albums that survive almost intact at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, suggests that the calf bindings appear to date from circa 1761 (G. Knox, Catalogue of the Tiepolo drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1975, pp. 3-9). A.P. Oppé, who was present at the 1914 sale, confirmed that the bindings of those three albums were of similar date (A.P. Oppé, 'A fresh group of Tiepolo drawings', Old Master Drawings, XVIII [September 1930], note 1). Professor Knox dates the drawings to 1758-1760, when Giambattista was suffering from a severe attack of gout, and suggests that the figures were drawn purely for the artist's entertainment. It seems likely that Tiepolo himself had the drawings bound into albums before his departure for Madrid in 1762, and left them with his wife in Venice for safekeeping.