Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo was the son of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the foremost Venetian painter of the eighteenth century. In 1757, Domenico began a series of etchings, Raccolta di Teste (Collection of Heads), based on oil sketches of about twenty imaginary portraits of philosophers painted by his father. Some time later, Domenico himself painted a series of portrait heads, based on the etchings. This painting derives from number 8 in Book I, published in 1758.