- 89
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo Venice 1727 - 1804
Description
- Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
- a centaur and a satyr in a landscape
- signed in brown ink, lower right: Domo Tiepolo f; and numbered in brown ink, upper left: 5
bears inscription in brown ink, verso: gli amori di Centauri colle ninfe boschereccie Disegno originale/di Domenico Tiepolo col nome autografo _fc._
pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk
Catalogue Note
This is one of Giandomenico's extensive group of drawings of centaurs, satyrs and their families, which were described by James Byam Shaw as 'the most delightful and original of all Giandomenico's allegorical and mythological subjects' (see The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, pp. 41-2).
Byam Shaw believed that the drawings were executed as independent works of art, datable between 1761 and 1791; however, Jean Cailleux dated the series earlier, to between 1753 and 1762, noting that it may once have comprised up to one hundred drawings (see J. Cailleux, 'Centaurs, Fauns, Female Fauns and Satyrs among the drawings of Domenico Tiepolo', The Burlington Magazine, June 1974, no. 31, supplement).