Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Mumm family collection, Reims, France since the late nineteenth century until sold by a direct descendant;
With Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York, circa 1998;
Acquired from the above by the present collector.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has an old stretcher and is apparently unlined, having recently been given a supporting loose canvas behind. There is a faint evenly spaced horizontal craquelure lower down with one more marked horizontal crease at the upper left running from the left edge into the blue feathers, presumably the result of rolling at some time. The exceptionally finely preserved surface texture has retained the feel of every brushstroke, with their rich unworn tone and colour virtually untouched. There has been brittleness in the past so that the crease fractured the paint with some little lost flakes. Across the surface minute lost corners of flakes can be seen in places on close inspection. A few other old slightly fractured horizontal cracks have also been retouched, visible under ultra violet light, in the background at lower left and right and in the lower centre in the armour below the neck around the chain. One other tiny retouching is just to the left of the cheek bone, with one also in the background on the right probably down the stretcher bar line. These are minor imperfections. The extraordinarily fresh pure condition of this painting is a rare instance almost of agelessness. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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This charismatic study of a youth was painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the middle or latter years of the 1740s. These were great years for Tiepolo and important commissions filled his time in Venice and throughout the Veneto, including the magnificent frescoes of the Meeting of Cleopatra and Anthony in Palazzo Labia in Venice completed in 1744 (see fig. 1). By now an artist of great renown, he was soon to be summoned to Würzburg in 1750 to paint arguably his greatest work in the frescoes in the Kaisersaal of the Residenz (see fig. 2).

The exceptional condition of the work allows us to appreciate the full range of Tiepolo's mastery with paint. The bravura brushwork of the sketchy ruff and the handling of the clothing provide a fine contrast to the soft layering of glazes in the flesh tones creating an overall feeling of delicacy and restraint suited to the features of the sitter. Though equally adept in oils as when working on frescoes, Tiepolo was also a highly accomplished draughtsman and it is often in his works on paper that we find the genesis of his ideas. His drawings served as studies which he reused and remodelled throughout his career, often adapting a single idea into several solutions to fit different commissions and so it is with the present work. The modelling of the torso unquestionably finds its source in a drawing by Tiepolo from the mid 1740s now in the Hermitage in Leningrad (see fig. 4).¹ Though the boy's pose has altered and his head is now turned to the right, the dress and ruff are clearly dependant on the drawing, as is the inclusion of the medal which hangs over his chest. The Hermitage drawing also serves as a preparatory study for one of the corner-pieces of the frescoed ceiling of 1745 in the Scalzi church in Venice depicting the Miracle of the House of Loreto which was destroyed in 1915 but whose corner pieces still hang in the Accademia in Venice.

While the pose of the boy relates to the Hermitage drawing, his delicate features, wavy hair and the modelling of his face can be found once more in the page carrying the crown in the aforementioned fresco of the Meeting of Cleopatra and Anthony (fig. 3), also datable to the 1740s. As is to be expected with Tiepolo, the same figure-type was reused throughout his career including in his fresco of The Investiture of Bishop Herold as Duke of Franconia in Wurzburg (fig. 2). Knox compares the present work to a group of half-length page boys comprised mainly of works given to the artist's son, Gian Domenico.² The clearly superior quality of the present work sets it apart from Gian Domenico's youths but it does suggest that the figure types used by the father were subsequently remodelled by the son when he took over the workshop, very much in the same way as the series of Philosophers.³

The attribution has been independently endorsed by Keith Christiansen and Dr Beverley Brown following first-hand inspection, and by Professor George Knox on the basis of a transparency. Christiansen's proposed dating of the work to the late 1740s before Tiepolo left for Würzburg is supported by Brown.


Provenance
The painting was part of the Mumm collection since at least the late nineteenth century, where it hung in the drawing room (see fig. 1). Originally German, the von Mumm family founded their champagne business in Reims in 1827. Despite living in France for over a century the family never took up French citizenship and at the outbreak of the First World War their property was confiscated by the French government. After the war the company was rebuilt and expanded, and quickly became a global brand.


1.  See G. Knox, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, A Study and Catalogue Raisonné of the Chalk Drawings, Oxford 1980, vol. I, p. 105, cat. no. B29, reproduced vol. II, plate 53.
2.  Private communication, 4 March 2011.
3.  See G. Knox, '''Philosopher Portraits' by Giambattista, Domenico and Lorenzo Tiepolo' in The Burlington Magazine, March 1975, pp. 147-155.