A standing woman seen from below

This typology of figure, floating in the sky and without specific attributes, is recurrent in Tiepolo’s drawn œuvre. The artist would effortlessly sketch them on paper and then employ them to fill his expansive fresco ceiling decorations. Drawings of this type can in general be traced back to an album entitled Sole figure per soffitti, which surfaced in 1914 at a Christie’s sale after a distinguished provenance and before it was dismembered. For a discussion of two similar drawings with the same provenance see R. P. Townsend, ‘Two Rediscovered Tiepolo Drawings from Robert Lehman’s Early Collection’, Master Drawings, XXXI, no. 2, Summer, 1993, pp. 163-169.