Adoration of the Virgin and Child

Long ago considered the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, this sheet entered the Morgan collection in 1909 as an anonymous eighteenth-century Italian drawing. In 1994, Ugo Ruggieri recognized it as the work of Mattia Bortoloni (1696-1750), an artist much influenced by the young Tiepolo. The drawing corresponds to an oil sketch by Bortoloni sold (erroneously as the work of Tiepolo) at Sotheby's, London, 2 December 1964, lot 107, the present whereabouts of which are unknown; both the drawing and oil sketch must have been preparatory for an otherwise untraced altarpiece.