Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Given by the artist to the Somasco Convent, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice;

Count Leopold Cicognara;

Antonio Canova;

Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori-Canova;

Francesco Pesaro;

Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire, by 1842, and by descent to his nephew,

Alfred Capel-Cure, Blake Hall, Essex,

his sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885, part of lot 1024 (to Parsons);

Richard Owen;

Villiers David, London;

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 7 July 2008, lot 113;

Where acquired.

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, 18th Century Venice, 1951, cat. no. 124;

London, Royal Academy, European Masters of the 18th Century, 1954-55, cat. no. 606.

The present drawing depicting The Virgin and Child, with St. Joseph and two Angels, executed in Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s signature vibrant and translucent golden brown ink with gray wash, is an exceptional example of one of the artist’s drawings for his celebrated series illustrating variations on the theme of the Holy Family, drawings which rank among the high points of the Tiepolo's draughtsmanship. Dated by Knox to circa 1754-62, the drawings in this series are among the artist’s most accomplished and beautiful studies in pen and ink and wash. The much-admired group is not connected to any known painted scheme and nor does any individual sheet appear to relate to any surviving painting; they seem to have been drawn entirely for their own sake.

The celebrated series of some 76 drawings seems to have been contained in an album supposedly given by the artist to the Library of the Somasco Convent in Venice (see Provenance). This early provenance came to light when an album of drawings, which included mainly variations of the Holy Family subject, were exhibited and sold at the Savile Gallery, London, in May 1928. The Savile catalogue reproduced an inscription written by Edward Cheney on the inside of the front cover which provided the early provenance of the album.¹ The original document containing Cheney's inscription was subsequently sold in these rooms in 2023.²  

Giovanni Battista cleverly maximizes the impact of the white surface of the paper, his natural light source, perfectly combining it with his application of pen and wash to achieve sparkling results. He has produced not only the most extraordinarily imaginative compositional variations, but has also adapted the traditional iconography of the Holy Family, incorporating a variety of additional elements through the course of the series, which results in each drawing being a truly different interpretation of the subject, and the series being a real virtuoso tour-de-force.

‘They float on the page like exquisite arabesques, a marvelous monument to Giambattista’s talent and virtuosity.’³ In these appropriately poetic terms, George Knox characterised perfectly Tiepolo's astonishing series of drawings on the theme of the Holy Family, of which this is a splendid example.

1. G. Knox, Catalogue of the Tiepolo Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1960, p. 6

2. Sale, New York, Sotheby's, 25 January 2023, part of lot 50

3. Tiepolo. A Bicentenary Exhibition 1770-1970. Drawings, mainly from American collections by Giambattista Tiepolo and the members of his circle, exhib. cat., Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, 1970, under no. 89