Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Given by the artist to the Somasco Convent, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice;
Count Leopold Cicognara;
Antonio Canova;
Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori-Canova;
Francesco Pesaro;
Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire, by 1842, and by descent to his nephew,
Alfred Capel-Cure, Blake Hall, Essex, his sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885, part of lot 1024 (to Parsons);
Richard Owen;
Villiers David, London

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, 18th Century Venice, 1951, cat. no. 124;
London, Royal Academy, European Masters of the 18th Century, 1954-55, cat. no. 606

 

Paper stuck to mount at top and bottom left corners. Paper quite brittle but clean and fresh. Tiny tear right of centre of bottom edge. Some small holes in darkest areas of ink on Joseph's head. Spots in sky are ink. Corners slightly undulating where attached to mount.
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Taking just the few ingredients of the Holy Family and two angels, Tiepolo was able to produce an infinite number of compositions, suffused with light and charm.  The drawings in the Holy Family series, dated by George Knox to the period 1754-62, appear clearly to have been made as independent works of art.  Knox has suggested that the drawings may well have been executed around 1760, when Giambattista was incapacitated by gout and unable to work normally. At least seventy-six variations on the theme are known, none of which seem to be connected with any surviving painted projects.  Knox comments that these drawings: 'float on the page like exquisite arabesques, and together represent the most magnificently sustained testimony to Giambattista's graphic inventiveness' .¹

1.  G. Knox, Tiepolo: A Bicentenary Exhibition 1770-1970, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1970, under cat. no. 89