Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) - Drawings

Giambattista Tiepolo
Punchinello and his Lady
before 1770
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Three Angels
before 1770
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Lady with a high collar
before 1770
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Giambattista Tiepolo
Aeolus and Diana
before 1770
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Giambattista Tiepolo
Bacchus and Fauns
before 1770
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
The Flight into Egypt
ca. 1725-35
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Giambattista Tiepolo
Ceiling Design with Triumph of Hercules
before 1770
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Villa in the Veneto
1757-59
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"There are three thousand or more surviving Tiepolo drawings.  They vary widely in type, function and medium, but from about 1730 two types predominate.  One is the sketch in ink [examples above], and the other is the chalk study [examples below].  The chalk drawings – black or red chalk, often on blue paper, with white highlighting – are usually from a quite late stage of preparation: some are studies from life of arms, hands, drapery and other important details, and some are finished drawing of groups of figures carried out with little variation in the fresco cycles.  But by the time Tiepolo turned to chalk, a general design had usually been fixed.  It is the sketches in pen and wash that seem to offer most insight into the early stages of invention.  Not all the pen-and-wash drawings are directly related to painting projects, in fact: there is a whole class of pretty collectibles of such subjects as the Virgin and Child and the Flight into Egypt, a class of single caricature figures, a wonderful class of views of country architecture in the Veneto, and others.  But a high proportion of the pen-and-wash drawings are in one way or another preparatory for painting.  They may not have been entirely private meditations – indeed, they survived because collected, or carefully kept as part of the resource of the workshop – but they are often untidy, un-pretty, elliptical, functional explorations of pictorial problems Tiepolo was addressing."

– from Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall (Yale University Press, 1994)

Giambattista Tiepolo
Head of a Youth
before 1770
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Head of a Satyr as Mask
ca. 1750
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giambattista Tiepolo
Fallen Angel
ca. 1752
drawing
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giambattista Tiepolo
Soldier with Sword
ca. 1750
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Giambattista Tiepolo
Man wearing a Cloak
ca. 1750
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Roman Soldier
ca. 1720-22
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Giambattista Tiepolo
Eagle
before 1770
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Giambattista Tiepolo
Study of Right Hand
before 1770
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago