Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

With Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London, (stock no. 28821) by 1967;
Private collection, England

The subject of this drawing derives from a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) of the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity in the ceiling of the Sala Capitolare in the Scuola Grande dei Carmini, Venice.  The commission, first mooted in 1740, was unveiled in 1743, consisting of a central canvas showing the Virgin Appearing to St. Simon Stock, and four shaped canvases within stucco frames representing the Virtues, with four other shaped canvases filled with angels in varying roles.

Giandomenico, in the present sheet, has taken this theme and freely adapted it into a new composition, removing the allegorical figures of the Virtues from the architectural setting of his father’s composition, and placing them on clouds suggesting a heavenly setting, supported beneath by bands of putti, very much in the manner of several of his series of drawings on sacred themes, such as those devoted to the Assumption of the Virgin, God the Father in the Clouds, and Christ Received into Heaven by the Father and the Holy Spirit.¹  The central figure of Charity holds a child standing in her lap with a raised arm, recalling the iconography of the infant Christ Child blessing, while a second child clutches her drapery from behind.  Hope, facing away from the viewer in the Carmine composition, is seated facing the viewer with her anchor at the foot of Charity, looking at the standing child.  Faith holding the Chalice of Salvation stands behind Charity, looking directly at the viewer.

Giandomenico’s drawings on sacred themes are precarious to date, however it is generally assumed that drawings such as these belong to the second half of his career, after his return from Würzburg to Venice in 1754.  Byam Shaw has dated several of these drawings to the time Giandomenico was in Venice, circa 1760, prior to his departure for Madrid in 1762.

1. See J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, pp. 31-35