The Immaculate Conception (Joachim en Anna receiving the Virgin Mary from God the Father)

Tiepolo dated his large altarpiece for the convent of Santa Chiara in Cividale, a town in Friuli, 1759, and that painting is now in Dresden. This small canvas is his sketch for it. An old inscription on the back calls it the original model for the convent's altar. The subject is an unusual version of the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary was conceived without original sin. God the Father, at the top beside a globe, sends the young Mary down on a cloud of angels to her parents, Anna kneeling with an arm stretched out and Joachim behind her with his hands joined. In 1942 the sketch was sold to the office buying art for the museum Hitler planned in Linz, for 40,000 guilders. It was recovered in 1946 and has been at the Rijksmuseum since 1948.