Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 1920, lot 41;
with Colnaghi, London;
Richard Owen, Paris;
Jean Cailleux, Paris (according to Gealt);
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 16 January 1985, lot 126; acquired at the sale

Paris, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, 1921;
Gainesville, et al., 1991-93, no. 35

Jean Cailleux, Centaurs, Fauns, Female Fauns and Satyrs among the Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, advertising supplement to The Burlington Magazine, June 1974, fig. 64;
A.M. Gealt and M.E. Vetrocq, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo's Punchinello Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum, 1979, p. 162, no. S61, reproduced

Lightly foxed throughout. Otherwise very good and fresh.
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Giandomenico Tiepolo's series of 104 drawings illustrating the eventful life of Punchinello, the commedia dell' arte "hero," have long been numbered amongst his most desirable and accomplished works.  Almost all of these have now entered museum collections, and only a very few works from the group have appeared on the market in recent times.  This playful theme was actually first treated by Giandomenico's father, Giambattista Tiepolo, around 1735-40. Domenico began his ambitious series of drawings much later, in the 1790s, following his work for the decorations of the Tiepolo family villa at Zianigo.   

Most of Giandomenico's Punchinello drawings make little reference to his earlier works, but this sheet is something of an exception to this rule, echoing as it does the depictions of centaurs and other mythical creatures that are typical of the artist's work throughout his career.  In fact, the central figure group in this composition corresponds fairly closely with a drawing of a centaur lifting a female satyr, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 1), and also to one of the Zianigo frescoes. 

Punchinello was a much loved figure in the popular theatre of the time.  Although no precisely defined texts were associated with his name, he was the subject of many stories that were handed down orally, and his rather questionable, but in the end innocent, exploits were also described by a number of authors. Yet no-one else, writer or artist, ever described his activities as thoroughly, or with such wit and charm, as Giandomenico Tiepolo.  In these drawings we see every possible aspect of this loveable yet rather anarchic figure's life, from banal scenes such as the preparation of gnocchi, to his encounters with exotic and mythical beasts, and eventually his death and burial. In some ways, the Punchinello  drawings are similar to those in the artist's other major late series, the Scenes of Everyday Life, but in the Punchinello compositions, we see a degree of fantasy and playfulness that surpasses Giandomenico's achievements in any of his other works.