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 Battista Tiepolo
The Holy Family with Three Angels
Auction Closed
January 27, 09:35 PM GMT
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid
The Holy Family with Three Angels
Pen and brown ink and gray wash over traces of black chalk;
bears inscription in brown ink, verso: per spediete al S. Luigi (?)
230 by 193 mm; 9 by 7 5/8 in
Count Leopoldo Cicognara;
Antonio Canova;
by inheritance to his half-brother, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori-Canova;
Francesca Pesaro;
by whom sold to Col. Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire;
by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Col. Alfred Capel-Cure, Blake Hall;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885 (presumably part of lot 1024);
with E. Parsons & Sons, London;
with P. & D. Colnaghi, London;
with Richard Owen, Paris;
Private Collection, France;
with Adolphe Stein, Paris, Master Drawings Presented by Adolphe Stein, London, 1977, no. 103;
sale, London, Christie's, 4 July 2000, lot 36;
with Paul Prouté, Paris, Catalogue G.B. Tiepolo, 2002, no. 10,
where acquired, 2002
This drawing is one of a series of at least seventy-six variations on the theme of the Holy Family originating from the Savile Album (so-called because it first came to light in an exhibition at the Savile Gallery in May 1928), a series of drawings that encapsulate an important aspect of Giambattista Tiepolo's draughtsmanship. Tiepolo had given the album to the Somasco Convent in Venice in 1762, before he left for Spain. It was only after the Cheney sale in 1885 that it was dismembered, some forty drawings being bought by the Savile Gallery, and around fifteen by Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi.1 The same album also contained a remarkable series of head studies (see lot 246).
The drawings in the Holy Family series, dated by George Knox to the period 1754-62, appear to have been made as independent works of art. None of the individual variations are connected with any painted projects. Knox comments that these drawings 'float on the page like exquisite arabesques, and together represent the most magnificently sustained testimony to Giambattista's graphic inventiveness.'2 Some of the drawings depict just the three key figures of the Christ Child and his parents, while in others Giambattista incorporated, as here, additional elements, such as the young St. John the Baptist, various adoring angels, and devices like sketchy palm trees that hint at physical settings. As Bernard Aikema has, however, noted, the iconography of these drawings may have been of less interest to Tiepolo than the compositions themselves.3
1. J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection: Italian Eighteenth Century Drawings, vol. VI, Metropolitan Museum, New York 1987, p. 104, under cat. no. 78
2. G. Knox, Tiepolo: A Bicentenary Exhibition 1770-1970, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1970, under cat. no. 89
3. B. Aikema, Tiepolo and his Circle, Drawings in American Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Art Museums, and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996-97, p. 222, under cat. no. 84