Duas cabeças de anjos

In March 1767 Charles III of Spain ordered seven altarpieces from Tiepolo for the church of San Pascual Baylon at Aranjuez, the royal summer estate south of Madrid. Tiepolo was 71, and he never saw them in place. The church was finished a few weeks after he died in Madrid in 1770, and by 1775 his canvases had been taken down and replaced with pictures by Mengs and two Spanish court painters whose smoother manner suited the king's advisers better. The originals were scattered, some were cut apart, and several are simply gone. These two angels' heads are a piece of one of them, cut from the altarpiece of Saint Joseph with the Christ Child, whose main body is now in Detroit. The Courtauld also keeps five of the small oil sketches Tiepolo made while working the commission out.