Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Venice, Giardini, Mostra del Tiepolo, 1951, pl. 113;
New York, The Frick Collection, Domenico Tiepolo, A New Testament, 2006-7, no. 302

Antonio Morassi, Disegni antichi della Raccolta Rasini, Milan 1937, no. LXXV, reproduced (as the Miracle of St. Agatha);
Christofer Conrad, 'Die grossformatigen religiösen Zeichnungen Giovanni Domenico Tiepolos,' Ph.D. dissertation, Heidelberg University 1996, no. 278;
A.L. Clark (ed), Mastery and Elegance, Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, Cambridge 1998, p. 84, fig. 10;
Adelheid M. Gealt and George Knox, Domenico Tiepolo, A New Testament, Bloomington 2006, pp. 694-95, no. 302, reproduced

The subject of this drawing has been interpreted, in the Rasini Collection catalogue and in the Gealt-Knox volume, as A Miracle of St. Agatha. When Catania, the saint's native city, was threatened by fire from the eruption of Etna, a priest ran to her shrine, took her veil, and held it up to stop the fire, saving the city from the falling ash and embers. The story is found in the Golden Legend.  An alternative interpretation of the subject listed by Gealt and Knox is the Feast of the Purification, when the priest Simeon saw flaming hearts falling from the sky as worshippers knelt holding their candles.  They suggest that there may also be a connection with the cult of the veneration of the Sacred Heart, which was popular in mid-18th century Venice.

Domenico Tiepolo's series of large drawings depicting the life of Christ and other religious subjects have long intrigued scholars and collectors.  As there is no contemporary source to explain the purpose of the series, it is generally assumed that it was a work of personal piety, begun after 1785 when he retired to the family villa at Zianigo.  The drawings became known through French collections in the nineteenth century.  An album of 138 of the drawings, purchased in Venice in 1833, is now in the Louvre (the Receuil Fayet), and the rest were probably bought in Italy by a French collector at the same time and are now dispersed throughout the world.  Three hundred and thirteen drawings of this type are currently known but as several obvious subjects are missing, it seems likely that there were originally even more. 

Adelheid Gealt and George Knox have done invaluable work in publishing the series, presenting extensive information on the possible sources of the subjects and placing them in a coherent order, revealing a project of considerable complexity and intellectual effort as well as artistic skill. They write:  'He (Domenico) does not simply illustrate one text or follow one decorative tradition, but creates - from all the texts available to him and all the resources of Venetian art with which he was familiar - a complete account of the Christian story from the parentage of the Virgin Mary to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul.  To this he adds an epilogue of a dozen drawings that seem to offer a brief account of Venetian piety in the subsequent ages'.¹

1. Gealt and Knox, op. cit., pp. 3-4