Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

This belongs to a substantial series of drawings by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, which are conceived to give the impression of classically-inspired statues. They do not directly copy classical or renaissance prototypes, but as George Knox pointed out, some of the drawings of this type in the Victoria and Albert Museum do relate closely to earlier sculptures at the Villa Cordellina, near Vicenza.¹On occasion, Giandomenico Tiepolo copied his father's drawings of this type, and his copy after the present drawing is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.² The Lugt Collection even houses both of another similar pair of drawings by the two Tiepolos, father and son, showing the same sculpture as here, but from a slightly different viewpoint, and without the hound at Meleager's feet.³

1. G. Knox, Catalogue of the Tiepolo Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1960, pp. 16-17, 55-56, nos. 74-80 

2. J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York 1987, cat. 137

3. J. Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, 3 vols., Paris 1983, vol. I, pp. 294-7, cats. 283, 285