Lot 1598 D α

This pastel is one of the few religious works in Lorenzo Tiepolo's œuvre and probably dates from his Spanish period. In 1762 the painter, who was born in 1736, travelled to Spain with his father Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his older brother Giovanni Domenico to carry out a commission from the Spanish king for the Madrid palace. While his father suffered rivalry and criticism from Anton Raphael Mengs in Madrid and soon died, Lorenzo remained in Spain and continued to work for the court. He specialised in pastels and used the technique to create portraits and fanciful half-length figures for the royal family and the Spanish nobility. The pastel technique had been perfected and made famous before him by the Venetian Rosalba Carriera. Stylistically, the present work shows Lorenzo's turning away from his father's art towards a classicist ideal of beauty, then in fashion, which is influenced by Correggio and Reni.