From Taddeo to Tiepolo: The Dr. John O’Brien Collection of Old Master Drawings
From Taddeo to Tiepolo: The Dr. John O’Brien Collection of Old Master Drawings
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
God the Father with Angels
Auction Closed
January 27, 09:35 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Venice 1727 - 1804
God the Father with Angels
Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk;
signed in brown ink, lower left: Domo Tiepolo f and bears numbering, upper left: 115 corrected to 106
244 by 177 mm; 9 5/8 by 7 in
with Spencer Samuels, New York, French and Italian 18th-century Master Drawings, 1985, no. 24,
where acquired, 1985
This is part of Giandomenico's series of over one hundred variations on the theme of God the Father supported by Angels and Cherubs. When James Byam Shaw wrote about the group in 1962, the highest number he knew of was 102, but since then other higher numbered drawings have appeared, including number 140, previously in the collection of Janos Scholz and today housed in the Morgan Library, New York.1Byam Shaw rightly felt that the relationship between some of these compositions and the upper section of Giambattista's important altarpiece Saint Thecla praying for the plague-stricken, in the cathedral at Este, would suggest a dating for the series after 1759.2
1. The Morgan Library, New York, inv. no. 1983.62
2. J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 32