Studies for Figures in Moses and the Bronze Serpent (recto); The Death of Sophonisba (verso); and Studies for Figures in Moses and the Bronze Serpent (recto); The Holy Family (verso)

These two drawings were part of a now dispersed album commonly referred to as the Gdansk Album. Several sheets from the album have been identified in the last half-century, including a double-sided study in the Prado, Madrid (inv. no. FD215), a sheet in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne (see: Disegni del Tiepolo, exh. cat., Udine, 1965, p. 57, no. 10, ill.) two sheets, one double-sided, in the Lorser Feitelson Collection at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara (inv. no. 1985.163a and 1985.163b; see: Old Master Drawings from the Feitelson Collection , exh. cat., Santa Barbara, University Art Museum, University of California, 1983, no. 63), and finally three sheets, two of which are double-sided, in the National Museum, Gdańsk (see Tiepolo i tiespoleschi w zbiorach polskich rysunki, ryciny, obrazy, exh. cat., Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe, 1997, nos. 3–5).

Like most of the sheets in this group, the two drawings depict nude men wrestling with serpents. These are studies for the biblical story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent (Numbers 21:4–7). The story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent seems to have interested Tiepolo for several years. The subject is depicted in the background of the painting Alexander and Campaspe in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which is generally dated to around 1725-6 (Giambattista Tiepolo 1696-1770 , exh. cat., Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, 1998-1999, no. 13), while a large fresco of this subject, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, was painted around 1728.