Giambattista Tiepolo

Poloutzoff collection, St. Petersburg, in the 19th century;
With Wildenstein & Co., New York, by 1962;
Mrs. M. James, London;
By whom posthumously sold, London, Sotheby's, December 3, 1969, lot 15, to Hallsborough;
With Hallsborough Gallery, London, at least until 1971;
With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London;
Dino Fabri, New York, by 1983;
With Bob Haboldt & Co., New York, by 1990;
Private Collection, New York;
With Hazlitt Gallery, New York;
From whom purchased by the present collector.

Udine, Villa Manin di Passariano, Mostra del Tiepolo, June 27 - October 31, 1971, no. 49;
Paris, Haboldt & Co., Tableaux anciens des écoles du nord, françaises, et italiennes, 1990, p. 70 (no cat. no.);
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Giambattista Tiepolo, Master of the Oil Sketch, September 18 - December 12, 1993, no. 26.

A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of Paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, London 1962, pp. 36 and 42, reproduced fig. 329;
A. Pallucchini, L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo, Milan 1968, p. 114, under cat. no. 192, and p. 128, cat. no. 263, reproduced;
A. Rizzi (ed.), Mostra del Tiepolo, exhibition catalogue, Udine, Villa Manin di Passariano, June 27 - October 31, 1971, cat. no. 49, reproduced;
R. Pallucchini, "Tiepolo a Passariano", in Arte Veneta, vol. 25, 1971, p. 336;
M. Gemin & F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo: I dipinti. Opera completa, Venice 1993, p. 378, cat. no. 345, reproduced in color p. 120, plate 73;
B.L. Brown (ed.), Giambattista Tiepolo, Master of the Oil Sketch, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, September 18 - December 12, 1993, pp. 220-21, cat. no. 26, reproduced, and in color p. 105;
F. Pedrocco, Tiepolo: The complete paintings, New York 2002, p. 267, cat. no. 185/2, reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This canvas has been lined. The paint layer is clean and has been varnished and retouched. The condition of the paint is clearly very good. It does not appear to be abraded or discolored and there is a fresh feeling to the figures. The paint layer is slightly flattened from the linings and there are small cosmetic retouches in the sky addressing tiny specks of the ground color which are more visible than they used to be. However, apart from some restorations in the figure of the woman in the upper center, there are no other significant restorations. The picture should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In the words of Beverly Louise Brown, "this is one of Tiepolo's most lyrical and engaging works on a small scale."¹  Truth and Time are locked in an embrace, her white mantle slipping to reveal her nude body and his scythe lying discarded as he peers at us over his shoulder. The iconography of the painting is to be read in the following terms: in the bright light of Truth, represented by the female figure raising her torch triumphantly in the centre of the composition, Deceit, Malice and Falsehood, symbolised by the writing figures at their feet, wither and die. The sharp foreshortening of the figures, intended to be seen from below (dal sotto in su), indicate that this is a sketch for a ceiling design, whether on canvas or frescoed. The canvas is an excellent example of the type of illusionistic painting in which Tiepolo excelled. His ability to foreshorten figures so convincingly and paint large-scaled decorative pictures led him to be regarded as the most imaginative and successful interior 'decorator' in 18th-century Venice.

The subject of Time discovering Truth was treated by Tiepolo on several occasions throughout his artistic career. The earliest representation of the subject is the ceiling he frescoed in the Villa Loschi Zileri dal Verme at Biron di Monteviale, near Vicenza, in 1734.²  About ten years later Tiepolo treated the theme again in a ceiling canvas which is today in the Museo Civico, Vicenza, but was probably originally painted for the Cordellina family.³  In 1744-45 he painted the subject in a fresco at the Palazzo Barbarigo at Santa Maria Zobenigo in Venice, for which an oil sketch also exists.⁴  Another large canvas of this subject, generally thought to date from the second half of the 1740s and produced as a finished painting per se, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.⁵  This particular sketch is closest in design to the two major ceiling projects of the mid-1740s although the figures of Time and Truth are reversed in comparison to both the Cordellina and Barbarigo commissions.⁶  Interestingly the sketch for the latter shows Time on the left and Truth on the right, as here, which would suggest that the Barbarigo design was changed at quite an advanced stage in the process, possibly at the patron's instigation. The present work is similar in handling to a sketch of Virtue and Nobility Putting Ignorance to Flight, datable to circa 1743, today in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.⁷  Both sketches are on finely-woven canvases covered in a thin layer of red ground, with an ochre-colored layer of paint on top. The execution in both sketches is characterised by a nervous energy, the black paint delineating the figures as if it were a wash drawing, and the color is applied sparingly in each painting.

The present sketch was almost certainly painted by Tiepolo in preparation for a larger painting of the same subject and although it remains unclear whether it is a bozzetto (a first idea for the composition)  or a modello (a more finished presentation piece for the patron to approve), its refined execution would suggest that it is more likely the latter. Some scholars have identified the painting for which this is a sketch as the ceiling canvas now in Vicenza, probably executed for the Cordellina for their villa at Montecchio Maggiore where Tiepolo worked between 1743-44. The composition is very different, however: the two principal protagonists Time and Truth are reversed and the emblematic figures along the lower edge are omitted entirely. Furthermore, the present sketch is oval whereas the Vicenza canvas is shaped. Brown has tentatively proposed that the sketch may have been done in preparation of a fresco design planned for the portico of the Villa Cordellina and she furthermore suggested that 'he may have later recycled a slightly transformed version of this sketch's design in the Vincenza canvas that was ultimately installed in the villa.'⁸

In the 19th century this painting was recorded as being in the Poloutzoff collection in St. Petersburg, where it hung alongside the Apotheosis of Doge Francesco Morosini (formerly in the collection of Edythe C. Acquavella, New York).⁹  This had led some scholars to assume that they were pendants, but this is unlikely for both technical and stylistic reasons.

1. See B.L. Brown, under Literature, p. 220.
2. Fresco, 335 by 275 cm.; see Gemin & Pedrocco, under Literature, pp. 298-99, cat. no. 163, reproduced.
3. Oil on canvas, 254 by 340 cm., probably painted circa 1743-44 for the villa of the Cordellina at Montecchio Maggiore; see Gemin & Pedrocco, op. cit., p. 363, cat. no. 300, reproduced.
4. Fresco, 350 by 250 cm., still in situ at Palazzo Barbarigo; ibid., p. 374, cat no. 329, reproduced. The sketch (oil on canvas, 69.6 by 55.5 cm.) was sold, London, Sotheby's, December 8, 2004, lot 46; idem, cat. no. 329a, reproduced.
5. Oil on canvas, 231 by 167 cm.; idem, pp. 458-59, cat. no. 471, reproduced.
6. It is interesting to note, however, that the ex-Sotheby's sketch for the Barbarigo ceiling shows Time on the left and Truth on the right, as here, suggesting that the design must have changed at a late stage in the process, quite possibly at the patron's instigation.
7. It can be dated on the basis of a letter Tiepolo wrote to the patron (dated October 26, 1743), in which the artist says he is halfway through completing the fresco for which the Dulwich picture is a sketch (see Brown, op. cit., p. 212, cat. no. 24, reproduced, and in color p. 103.
8. Brown, ibid., p. 221.
9. Idem, pp. 242-45, cat. no. 33, reproduced in color p. 112. This painting was formerly believed to represent the Apotheosis of Francesco Barbaro and another version of the sketch, formerly considered autograph but now generally accepted as a copy, is in the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia (idem, reproduced p. 244, fig. 111).