Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Bardini-Grassi collection, Florence;
with Pandora Old Masters, New York, 2000, from whom purchased

Paris and London, Galerie Heim, Le dessin vénitien au XVIIIe siècle/Venetian Drawings of the Eighteenth Century, 1971-72, cat. no. 74 (catalogue by Alessandro Bettagno); 
New York, Pandora Old Masters, An Exhibition of Old Master Drawings & Oil Sketches, 10-20 May 2000, cat. no. 18 (catalogue entry by Bernard Aikema)

Terisio Pignatti, 'Venetian Drawings of the Eighteenth Century,' Master Drawings, XI, no. 2, 1973, pp. 182-3, reproduced figs. 2-3 (the verso incorrectly described as in red chalk, and the reproduction of the verso incorrectly titled)

Window mounted (loosely). Some slight creases and small repairs at edges. Some light staining, especially towards bottom edge. Light diagonal creases, in all corners. Otherwise very good, fresh condition (particularly for a sheet of this size).
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When Alessandro Bettagno first published this drawing (loc. cit.), he described it, appropriately, as a highly important addition to the known corpus of early drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo.  He was, however, uncertain as to the exact dating of the drawing.  As Bernard Aikema noted in his comprehensive catalogue entry for the drawing,¹ the hesitation was understandable, since the lack of dated early works by Tiepolo -- and the stylistic variety of those that are known -- makes it extremely difficult to establish a clear early chronology.

This point is illustrated even within the present sheet, as the artist's mode of drawing in the elaborate compositional study on the recto differs strikingly from that in the very rapid figure study on the verso.  The recto shows the Sacrifice of Iphigenia -- a popular theme in Venetian painting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- in a large, freely drawn, but thoroughly worked out study.  In terms of the dynamic handling of light and shadow and the rhythmic sense of composition, this drawing can be compared with other outstanding early drawings by Tiepolo, such as the Crucifixion, in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, which can be dated around 1726-29.²   Here, as in the Fogg drawing, there is a sense of chiaroscuro that recalls the work of Giambattista Piazzetta, and also reminiscences of the paintings of Francesco Solimena, which exerted a significant influence on the early Tiepolo.

The subject was one that Tiepolo treated on several occasions.  The most similar in composition to this is the painting in the Giustinian Recanati collection, Venice, which can be dated to the late 1720s³, and indeed the present drawing may well be a first idea for this painting.  As Hannegan has noted, that painting is in fact based on Gérard de Lairesse's print of 1667, representing An Antique Sacrifice.⁴  The connection is less immediately obvious in the drawing, but the general composition must nonetheless derive from the print.  When Tiepolo returned a few years later to the subject of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in a pen and wash drawing of the early 1730s in Lyon,⁵ he devised an entirely new composition, although he did subsequently refer again to his earlier engraved source when revisiting the subject in a fresco in the Villa Corner at Merlengo, executed in the early 1750s.⁶   

The head on the verso of the Horvitz drawing cannot be connected to any of Giambattista's known paintings, although similar, dramatically turned heads do occur in a number of his paintings from the late 1720s, providing further support for the dating proposed for the recto.     

 

1.   Exh. cat., Pandora Old Masters, 2000; that entry forms the basis for the present note.

2.   See B. Aikema, Tiepolo and His Circle, Drawings in American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge and New York, 1996-97, cat. no. 17

3.   M. Gemin and F. Pedrocco, Gimbattista Tiepolo. I dipinti. Opera Completa, Venice 1993, p. 263, no. 96

4.   B. Hannegan, 'Giambattista Teipolo and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia,' Arte Veneta, XXXIX, 1985, pp. 125-31

5.   Giambattista Tiepolo 1696-1770, Exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1998-99, p. 251, cat. No. 89

6.   Gemin and Pedrocco, op. cit., no. 402