This arresting and brilliantly colored head of a bearded man is an important addition to the oeuvre Giandomenico Tiepolo, a leading Rococo artist who captured the grandeur of Venetian society. The work forms part of a set of three recently rediscovered paintings all on offer from a private collects ion and all inscribed with the name of a Greek philosopher, the present lot identified as Socrates.¹ Several distinct elements unite these three heads: each is rendered with vitality and depth and Tiepolo’s masterful, energetic brushwork is beautifully preserved throughout.

This head study forms part of a group of fantasy portraits of philosophers and exotic figures produced by Giandomenico Tiepolo and his father, Giambattista.² All of comparable formats and dimensions, these images were meant to delight the viewer, as remarkably exemplified in this painting and the two others in the set. The man here possesses a powerful presence. Cost.mes d in a red and green robe, embellished with a gold clasp and necklace, and with a white turban, he fills the canvas. The thick bristles of his golden-brown beard and eyebrows emphasize his furrowed brow and pursed lips, and his downward gaze adds a further degree of enigmatic drama to his likeness.

The genesis of this particular genre by the Tiepolos remains somewhat unclear, but it seems probable that at least some of the heads originated as part of a specific commission from Giambattista of circa 1757, before both father and son left Venice to work in Würzburg.³ Giandomenico went on to use his father’s compositions both as the basis for a series of engravings, the Raccolta di Teste, published in 1774, after his father’s death, and as inspiration for his own paintings. Many of Giandomenico’s painted heads of bearded men relate to the compositions represented in the Raccolta series, and the present canvas is no exception, most closely comparing to Testa I.5.⁴

1. A second from this series is inscribed Demosthenes and is offered as lot 157 in this sale. A third, inscribed Aristotle, is offered as lot 430 in the Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II sale (27 January 2023).

2. Two comparable head studies by Giandomenico Tiepolo have recently been sold at Replica Shoes 's New York on 30 January 2019 (for $471,000) and 1 February 2018 (for $447,000).

3. G. Knox, Domenico Tiepolo: Raccolta di teste, Udine 1970.

4. For example, London, British Museum, inv. no. 1907,0515.84.106. Another painted version of this head is recorded in the Federico Zeri Fototeca, no. 66570.