Giambattista Tiepolo Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid

Robert von Hirsch (1883-1977), Frankfurt (until 1933) and Basel;
His deceased sale, London, Sotheby's, 21 June 1978, lot 112, for £35,000 to the present owner.

Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Ausstellung von Meisterwerken alter Malerei aus Privatbesitz, 1925, no. 237;
Paris, Trotti Gallery, 1932.

O. Götz, G. Swarzenski & A. Wolters, Ausstellung von Meisterwerken alter Malerei aus Privatbesitz...MCMXXV, Frankfurt 1926, cat. no. 212, reproduced plate LXXXVIII (where it is suggested that the features of Truth are those of Tiepolo’s favourite model, Cristina);
A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 3, reproduced fig. 323;
A. Pallucchini, L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo, Milan 1968, p. 110, cat. no. 160a (under cat. no. 160);
M. Gemin & F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo. I dipinti. Opera completa, Venice 1993, p. 374, cat. no. 329a, reproduced;
M. Gemin & F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo. Paintings and Frescoes, Venice 1995, p. 216.

This painting is a bozzetto for a ceiling fresco of Time discovering Truth in the Palazzo Barbarigo, Venice, executed by Tiepolo in 1744-45 (for which see Gemin & Pedrocco, under Literature, p. 374, cat. no. 329, reproduced). He undertook the decoration of the two principal rooms on the piano nobile of the palazzo at Santa Maria del Giglio (o Zobenigo) upon the request of Pietro Barbarigo (1711-1801), whom Tiepolo may have met through Caterina Sagredo, second wife of Pietro’s brother Gregorio. Payments dating from these years are recorded in the Barbarigo archives (today held at the Museo Correr, Venice) and Barbarigo employed both Tiepolo and his favourite quadraturista Gerolamo Mengozzi, called “il Colonna”, who executed the trompe l’œil framing elements and designed two of the palazzo’s floors. The fresco of Time discovering Truth is the only one of the large frescoes which still remains in situ, along with two scenes with allegorical figures en grisaille (Gemin & Pedrocco, op. cit., pp. 374-5, cat. nos. 330-1, reproduced).

This canvas is an excellent example of the type of illustionistic painting in which Tiepolo excelled. His ability to foreshorten figures convincingly and paint large-scale decorative pictures – whether frescoed or on canvas – led to him being regarded as the most imaginative and successful interior 'decorator' of 18^th Century Venice. This canvas differs in numerous respects from the fresco Tiepolo finally executed; namely the overall design is entirely reversed and the ceiling is oval rather than circular. In the final design the architectural element, which invades the picture space of the bozzetto, is completely omitted, and the scythe, which so convincingly juts out over the edge of the simulated architectural surround in the bozzetto, is brought within the central picture space. As well as skilfully foreshortening the two principal figures of Time and Truth, Tiepolo has maintained the illusion of real and fictive space in the form of the putto crossing over the lower edge of the fresco. The bozzetto’s design is used again, in the same sense though slightly altered in its details, in the painting formerly with Haboldt, New York, painted in circa 1745 (ibid., p. 378, cat. no. 345, reproduced).

Using Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1611 ed.) as his source, the iconography adopted by Tiepolo in this painting is traditional. Father Time has put his scythe aside to grasp the naked beauty that is Truth. She holds aloft the sun, in the form of a radiant disc, as if to shed light on truth, and her left foot rests on a terrestrial globe representing Earth. It was clearly one of Tiepolo’s most popular subjects and other treatments of the theme are:-
Villa Loschi Zileri dal Verme, Biron, 1734 (ceiling fresco, 335 by 275 cm.; ibid., pp. 298-9, cat. no. 163, reproduced);
Museo Civico, Vicenza, once belonging to the palazzo of the Cordellina family at Montecchio Maggiore, 1743-44 (ceiling canvas, 254 by 340 cm.; ibid., p. 363, cat. no. 300, reproduced);
With Haboldt, New York, just before 1745 (bozzetto for a ceiling, oil on canvas, 46 by 64 cm.; ibid., p. 378, cat. no. 345, reproduced);
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1745-50 (canvas, 231 by 167 cm.; ibid., pp. 458-9, cat. no. 471, reproduced).

Robert von Hirsch will always be remembered as one of the most inspiring collectors and connoisseurs of the first half of the 20^th Century. After becoming a successful businessman in his uncle’s leather firm Offenbacher, he turned to collecting antiquarian books. It was not until 1907 that he began to collect paintings and works of art, under the direction of Georg Swarzenski, the newly appointed director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (where in 1925 he was to lend twelve important paintings, of which this was one). In 1933, as the political climate in Germany worsened, Von Hirsch moved himself and his entire collection to Basel, with the exception of a painting by Cranach (today in the Kunstmuseum, Basel), and subsequently opened up his home to students, scholars and museum curators alike, until his death in 1977.