Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
PROPERTY OF A TRUST
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

Punchinellos digging a grave

Details
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
Punchinellos digging a grave
signed ‘Dom. Tiepolo f’ (lower right) and numbered, probably by the artist, ‘43’ (in the border, upper left)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, watermark letters VC surmounted by a star in a crest
13 ¾ x 18 ¼ in. (34.8 x 46.3 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 1920, part of lot 41 (where bought by Colnaghi for £610).
with Colnaghi, London, by whom sold, January 1921, to the following
with Richard Owen, Paris, by whom broken up and sold individually through Matthiesen, 24 March 1937, for £70 to
Brinsley, later Sir Brinsley, Ford (1908-1999).
Literature
M.E. Vetrocq, Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings, exhib. cat., Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum and Stanford University Art Museum, 1979-1980, no. S30, ill., p. 149.
A.M. Gealt, Domenico Tiepolo. The Punchinello Drawings, New York 1986, no. 8, ill. [French edition: Gian Domenico Tiepolo. Dessins de Polichinelle, Arcueil, 1986].
A.M. Gealt and G. Knox, Giandomenico Tiepolo. Maestria e gioco. Disegni dal mondo, exhib. cat., Udine, Castello di Udine, and Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum, 1996-1997, p. 245, no. 43 [English edition titled Domenico Tiepolo, Master Draftsman].
B. Ford, ‘The Ford Collection’, Walpole Society, LX, II, 1998, pp. 99-101, no. RBF125 (catalogued by F. Russell).
S. Bostock, The Pictorial Wit of Domenico Tiepolo, I, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2009, no. 43, ill.
Exhibited
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Dessins de G.D. Tiepolo, 1921 (without catalogue).
Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of Works of Art from the Ford Collection, 1946, no. 146 (catalogue by B. Ford).
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, Eighteenth Century Venice, 1951, no. 138g (note by F.J.B. Watson).
Venice, Palazzo Ducale, and Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Canaletto & Venezia, 2018-2019, no. VII.18, ill. [French edition titled Éblouissante Venise. Venise, les arts et l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle].

Brought to you by

Clementine Sinclair
Clementine Sinclair

Lot Essay

The exact meaning of this scene is not entirely clear, but in it, Domenico has beautifully captured a more serious and solemn mood than in many of the other drawings for the series. The cow at lower right appears in reverse at the centre of a sheet in the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1975.1.529).

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