Lot Essay
The sheet is part of a series of drawings in which Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo explored in numerous variations the theme of Saint Anthony of Padua holding the infant Christ (see J. Byam Shaw, Drawings by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, pp. 31-32, 34). A group of twenty of these compositions, including the present one, were mounted together in the so-called Beauchamp Album, which comprised a total of 162 drawings by the artist and was assembled sometime between 1783 and 1793. The album was probably owned by the artist’s uncle, the painter Francesco Guardi. The Beauchamp Album, which bore the bookplate of Horace Walpole, one of its subsequent owners, was dispersed at auction in 1965.