Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
A sheet of studies of heads: a soldier wearing a helmet and holding a banner, and two young boys, one blowing a trumpet and wearing a hat
Auction Closed
January 31, 05:59 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid
A sheet of studies of heads: a soldier wearing a helmet and holding a banner, and two young boys, one blowing a trumpet and wearing a hat
Black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper;
bears chalk attribution, verso: Piazzetta
430 by 283 mm; 16 ⅞ by 11⅛ in.
Private collection, USA;
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 24 January 2007, lot 85
When this drawing came to the market in 1972, George Knox had already pointed out the relation between these studies and the handsome painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Joseph Receiving Pharaoh's Ring, now in the Dulwich Picture Gallery (fig. 1).1 The painting is datable circa 1735 but Knox, on stylistic grounds, thought that this drawing could possibly have been done later, around the 1740s. The mise en page of the present drawing is so wonderfully accomplished that it is conceivable that Giambattista, more than just studying the different heads, was making a complete drawing for its own sake.
1. A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 17, reproduced fig. 13
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