Venus in Vulcan's forge

In Virgil's Aeneid, the goddess Venus visits her estranged husband, Vulcan, in his forge on the island of Lemnos. Reclining haughtily on a cloud, she persuades him to make weapons for her son, Aeneas. Still moved by his desire for her, Vulcan cannot refuse. In executing this luminous drawing, Domenico was clearly inspired by a painting of the same subject produced by his father Giovanni Battista, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Fig. 1; M. Gemin and F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo. I dipinti. Opera completa, Venice, 1993, no. 478). This painting has been alternatively associated with Giovanni Battista’s decoration of the Salon de Alabarderos in the Royal Palace of Madrid, Spain (circa 1765), or thought to be a pendant for Apollo pursuing Daphne now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (circa 1755-60). Aiming for a more striking monumentality, however, Domenico has altered his father’s original design, adding space between the figures and by widening the composition. Possibly executed as a finished work for sale – as suggested by Professor Bernard Aikema in 2010 (quoted in Jean-Luc Baroni's catalogue) – the drawing may also have been a design for a decorative plaque to be executed in low relief, as thought by George Knox, who considers the sheet to be by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (quoted ibid.).

Fig. 1. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Venus at the Forge of Vulcan, Philadelphia Museum of Art (John G. Johnson Collection)