An Eagle with Wings Spread

George Knox, who attributed this drawing to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, suggested that it is a study for the eagle that appears hovering in the sky in a ceiling fresco of 1743 in the Palazzo Pisani Moretta a San Polo, Venice. The correspondence is indeed fairly close. Although Jacob Bean thought that the possibility that the drawing is a copy – perhaps made by the artist's son Domenico, the softness and broadness of the modelling strokes in charcoal, and the overall volumetric definition of form (in terms of large planes of highlight and shadow) seem typical of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Knox recorded four further drawings that he associated with the ceiling of the Palazzo Pisani Moretta (Knox 1980, vol. I, D.130, M.3, M.279, M.702, the latter repr. vol. II, pl. 33, see here ‘References’ for full bibliography).

Hans Tietze (1947, p. 180, no. 90) relates the Museum’s drawing to the eagle on the top of the flag-staff in the fresco "The Marriage of Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of Burgundy" in the Residence in Würzburg. Another drawing from the same source is "Head of a Boy with Turban" at the Art Institute of Chicago (Tietze 1947, p. 180). In 1996, Bernard Aikema reaffirmed that Giovanni Battista Tiepolo used a slight variation of the eagle seen in this drawing in the fresco "The Marriage of Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of Burgundy" in the Residence in Würzburg.

With regard to the provcenance, the accession card in the Museum’s Department of Drawings and Prints further notes that this drawing evidently comes from the same sketchbook as the ‘Study of Dogs’, after Veronese (Metropolitan Museum of Art inv. 37.165.53) which may be dated circa 1743. The accession card notes that Eisenmann bought the drawing from the sale on March 27, 1882, at Gutekunst in Stuttgart, but there are no further informations given. The same accession card notes that de Vries, Amsterdam, owned the drawing, but there are no further informations given. (F.R.)