Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Giovanni Domenico Bossi,
by descent to his daughter Maria Teresa Carolina Bossi (1825-1881) who married
Karl Christian Friederich Beyerlen (1826-1893),
his sale, Stuttgart, H.G. Gutekunst, 27-28 March 1882;
Marie-Pierre-Louis Hélie de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duc de Talleyrand (1859-1937), Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt,
from whose heirs acquired by the British Rail Pension Fund;
with Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox Ltd, London;
sale, New York, Christie’s, 23 January 2002, lot 60

A. Morassi, Dessins Vénitiens du Dix-huitième Siècle de la Collection du Duc de Talleyrand, Milan 1958, no. 46, reproduced;
G. Knox, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo: A study and catalogue raisonné of the chalk drawings, Oxford 1980, p. 267, no. M.453 (as Giovanni Battista)

Expressive and vigorously drawn, this fine chalk study was previously given to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, but is stylistically closer to his son Giovanni Domenico’s works in this medium. The close working relationship between father and son meant that Domenico often made copies after Giovanni Battista’s paintings and drawings; this goes some way to explaining the likeness of the figure depicted - as George Knox observed (see Literature) - to the young man in the center of Giovanni Battista's The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, which has been housed at Arkhangelskoye Palace, near Moscow, since its acquisition by Prince Nicolai Yousoupoff in 1800.