Traditionally, this work was considered a preparatory sketch for the frescoes on the dome of the collegiate church at La Granja. In 1768 Charles III initiated the decoration of that church, and its dome appears in architect Francesco Sabatini’s drawings with eight spaces designated for pictorial scenes. Spanish painters Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819) and Francisco Bayeu y Subías (1734-1795) continued work on the decoration after Tiepolo’s death. The latter took over the dome and, as José Manuel de la Mano has pointed out, everything seems to indicate that he followed the design for the project established by Tiepolo. In fact, Saint John the Evangelist by Bayeu (Museo del Prado), also related to the La Granja project, shows that the artist originally proposed a composition close to Tiepolo’s.

Manuela Mena Marqués has questioned whether a group of drawings of evangelists by Tiepolo at the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, might also be related to the decoration of the collegiate church at La Granja. Despite the difference in size, those drawings bear clear stylistic and technical similarities to the current drawing and, like this one, they come from the Carderera Collection, Madrid.

In this drawing Tiepolo has applied washes over pencil lines to create volume, and used the whiteness of the paper for highlights; a few rapid, broken pen strokes complete the figures’ contours. Like most of his wash-and-ink drawings, Saint John the Evangelist, c.1769, corresponds to an early stage in the preparatory process for Tiepolo’s paintings, while pencil studies present a more finished aspect.

Outstanding at everything he undertook, Giambattista Tiepolo was especially known for his frescoes and was famous far beyond the borders of his native Venice. In 1750 he moved with his two sons, Giandomenico and Lorenzo, to Würzburg (then in Austria) to decorate the residence of bishop-prince Karl Philipp von Greifenclau zu Vollraths (1690-1754). There Tiepolo painted the Four continents, 1751-53, possibly his best known fresco, in the main stairway of the palace. In 1762 he was called to Madrid by Charles III and was again accompanied by his two sons. There he painted frescoes for the Throne Room at the new Royal Palace. Tiepolo never returned to Venice, and in March 1770 died at the Spanish court while working on the project to which the present drawing is believed to be related (Carlos Varona, M. C. de,: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 236).