Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid

Estimate

65,000 - 85,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

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
bears chalk attribution, verso: Piazzetta;
black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper

Provenance

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 13 July 1972, lot 36;
Private collection, USA

Catalogue Note

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; see Antonio Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 17, reproduced fig. 13). 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.