Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Mancinelli Scotti collection, Milan;

Whence sold (‘Raccolta del Conte Mancinelli Scotti’), Milan, Galleria Scopinich, 29 May 1929, lot 31;

Rasini collection, Milan;

Private collection, Europe;

Anonymous sale (‘Property from a European Private Collection’), London, Christie's, 7 July 2016, lot 36, for £80,000;

Where acquired by the present owner.

R. Pallucchini, ‘Di una pittrice veneziana del settecento: Giulia Lama’, Rivista d’Arte, XV, 1933 (as Giulia Lama);

A. Morassi, ‘The Young Tiepolo’, The Burlington Magazine, LXIV, 371, February 1934, p. 91, reproduced pl. II, A (as Tiepolo);

A. Porcella, ‘Il Tiepolo e i Tiepoleschi’, L’Arte, XLIV, December 1941 (as Piazzetta);

A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 28 (as a very early work by Tiepolo, close to Piazzetta);

A. Pallucchini, L’opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo, Milan 1968, p. 136, under variously attributed works;

A. Mariuz, L’opera completa del Piazzetta, Milan 1982, p. 82, no. 28a, reproduced (as Giulia Lama, after Piazzetta's painting in Prague);

M. Gemin and F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo: I dipinti, Opera completa, Venice 1993, p. 229, no. 34, reproduced (as Tiepolo, early 1720s);

S.M. Pilo, La Giovinezza di Giovan Battista Tiepolo, Venice 1997, pp. 77 and 79, reproduced fig. 65;

F. Pedrocco, Tiepolo, The Complete Paintings, New York 2002, p. 203, no. 35, reproduced (as Tiepolo).

First published as an early work by Tiepolo by Antonio Morassi in 1934 – an attribution already proposed by Adolfo Venturi and Roberto Longhi when the picture was sold at auction in Milan in 1929 – this painting of Saint Joseph tenderly holding up the Christ Child has since been accepted as such in the recent literature. Although in 1968 Anna Pallucchini in the opera completa listed the painting in a section on variously attributed works, more recently Filippo Pedrocco and others have ascribed it to the Venetian master. As Pedrocco points out, the dimensions, format and style of this painting share evident similarities in the rendering of the figures and the typology of the Child with the series of devotional images Tiepolo produced in the early 1720s. He draws a particularly telling comparison with a painting by Tiepolo formerly in the Brass Collection, Venice, in oval format of the Virgin clasping the Christ Child,¹ who is seen di sotto in sù, as here. The design of this picture relates to a composition by Giambattista Piazzetta (1682/3–1754) housed today at the Národní Galerie, Prague,² and is evidence of the relationship between the two artists at this early point in Tiepolo’s career, when already his distinctive modelling and vigorous brushwork are apparent.  

¹ Pedrocco 2002, p. 202, no. 33, reproduced p. 203.

² O 10655; oil on canvas, 69 x 56.5 cm.; https://sbirky.ngprague.cz/en/dielo/CZE:NG.O_10655