A crowd watching a charlatan (recto); A flying angel (verso)

This is a theme which the artist painted on several occasions. The most developed composition, dating from circa 1756, is in the Museo de Arte, Barcelona. In 1765 Domenico painted four pictures, The Charlatan, The Soothsayer, The Story Teller, and The Triumph of Punchinello similar in composition to the present drawing, A. Mariuz, Giandomenico Tiepolo, Venice, 1971, figs. 195-198 and 203. The present drawing shows the composition from a different angle, placing most of the figures in front of the platform rather than to one side as in most of the painted versions.
A number of drawings rapidly executed without wash were formerly in the Paul Wallraf and Oppé Collections, J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, no. 44, illustrated. Byam Shaw points out that these drawings are reminiscent of Giambattista's Scherzi di Fantasia etchings.