Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

This large and appealing, freely drawn sheet by Giambattista Tiepolo represents a rather unusual variant of the theme of the Holy Family, a subject that Tiepolo painted and drew many times over the course of his career. Writing about two other, similar drawings by the artist (Virgin and Child with St. John of the Cross (?), St. Sebastian, and St. Peter of Alcántara and Virgin and Child Adored by Monks and Others), both formerly in the collection of Prince Alexis Orloff and now in the Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum,¹ George Knox also associated the present drawing with a group of Tiepolo’s 'sacra conversazione' studies, once part of the Orloff album that was dismembered and sold in Paris in 1920 (see Literature).²

^The majority of these compositions show a saint holding a large wooden cross, as we can see here in the foreground, where a Franciscan monk, seen from the back, is kneeling barefoot in front of the Madonna and Child. Knox identified the saint as the founder of the Discalced Franciscans, St. Peter of Alcántara, canonized in 1669, noting that Giambattista’s only painted representation of this saint, now at the Prado, was executed circa 1769 for the order’s church at Aranjuez.³

In technique and size, all these drawings are very similar, making them a loosely related series. Though the dating of these works has been debated by various scholars, it is generally given as circa 1730-35. As it happens, in 1732 the Venetian Discalced Carmelites undertook the decoration of the first chapel on the left of their church, and Tiepolo was commissioned to decorate the ceiling with a fresco of Christ on the Mount of Olives, which was mentioned by Zanetti in 1733.⁴  Taking this into consideration, Knox suggested that this commission from the Carmelite order could have provided the stimulus for Giambattista to produce a group of studies focusing on Saints Peter of Alcántara and John of the Cross.  

In a recent email⁵, Bernard Aikema has also emphasised the stylistic similarity between the present drawing and one of the abovementioned drawings in the Metropolitan Museum, The Virgin and Child with SS. Francis, Peter of Alcántara (?), Mary Magdalene, and Others, which he, however, dates around 1735.⁶

1. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. nos. 1975.1.440 and 1975.1.439; See Byam Shaw and Knox, op. cit., nos. 74 and 75

2. Sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 29-30 April 1920, lots 130-137

3. Madrid, Prado, inv. no. 10078140; see Antonio Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 21, reproduced fig. 187

4. Antonio Maria Zanetti, Della Pittura Veneziana e Delle Opere Pubbliche dei Veneziani Maestri, ed. Venice 1792, p. 602

5. Email communication dated 29 November 2023

6.  Bernard Aikema,Tiepolo and His Circle, Drawings in American Collections, New York 1996, pp. 80-81, cat. 28, reproduced