Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

From an album of Tiepolo drawings probably belonging to Count Grigory Vladimirovich Orlov (1777-1826), St. Petersburg and Paris,

by descent to Prince Alexis Orlov (Orloff),

his sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Tableaux anciens ... dessins par G.-B. Tiepolo / Composant la Collection / de Son Excellence feu le / Prince Alexis Orloff, 29-30 April 1920, lot 106, fig. 89 (10,000 francs to Derveaux) 

A luminous example of the extraordinarily accomplished drawing style of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, this large scale drawing is characterized by the fluid use of different shades of brown washes, skilfully applied to leave the white of the paper to define the spaces.

The sheet originates from an album of outstanding drawings by Tiepolo that belonged to the exiled Russian Prince Alexis Orloff, which was dispersed at auction at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, in 1920 (see Provenance). In the album there were six drawings of this subject, including the present one (lots 85 to 91): four were, like this, vertical compositions and two horizontal (lots 87-88). In the present sheet, Joseph pulls the rope of a boat, trying to get it to shore. The Madonna and Child are behind, while the head and part of the body of a donkey can be seen behind a large tree to the right.

The Orloff drawings are generally believed to have been drawn between 1725 and 1735, and were likely executed as independent works.

In a 1961 article in The Burlington Magazine, George Knox described this important group of drawings, pointing out that until that point the only record of them was the catalogue of the 1920 sale.¹ Characterised by their large format, ambitious compositions and brilliantly sophisticated use of a light-filled, golden-brown wash, the drawings by Giambattista from the Orloff album include many of the most spectacular and beautiful of all the artist's surviving drawings. Knox noted two possibilities regarding the history of the album. It could have been purchased by Prince Alexis Orloff at the end of the 19^th century, which leaves open the possibility that it was part of the large collection of Tiepolo drawings bought by the London dealer Parsons and Sons at the sale of Edward Cheney’s drawings, at Sotheby’s in 1885. Alternatively (and in Knox’s view more probably), the drawings were part of the Orloff family collection and descended from Gregory Vladimirovitch Orloff (1777-1826). Gregory was the son of Vladimir Grigorievitch Orloff, who was appointed President of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1766. He wrote books about Italian music and painting and spent most of his life outside Russia, in the last years of 18^th Century.  Four of Orloff’s uncles (as well as his father) were prominent men in the Russia of Catherine the Great.

A very comparable sheet of the same subject, formerly in the collection of Juan and Felix Bernasconi, was sold in New York in 1994.² Giambattista's son, Domenico, later also treated the subject of the Flight into Egypt, in a famous series of etchings.

1. G. Knox, 'The Orloff Album of Tiepolo Drawings', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CIII, no. 699, June 1961, pp. 269-275
2. Sale New York, Sotheby’s, 12 January 1994, lot 174