Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
The Property of a Trust
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

Punchinellos feasting

Details
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
Punchinellos feasting
signed ‘Dom.o Tiepolo f’ (upper left) and numbered, probably by the artist, ‘85’ (altered into ‘86’) (in the border, upper left)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, watermark crown with letters GAF (cf. Heawood 877)
13 5/8 x 18 ¼ in. (34.6 x 46.5 cm)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; London, Sotheby’s, 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. S12, ill.
G. Knox, ‘Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings: Satire, or Labor of Love?’, in Satire in the Eighteenth Century, New York and London, 1983, pp. 132, 145, no. 86.
A.M. Gealt, Domenico Tiepolo. The Punchinello Drawings, New York, 1986, no. 22, ill. [French edition: Gian Domenico Tieopolo. Dessins de Polichinelle, Arcueil, 1986].
A.M. Gealt and G. Knox, Domenico Tiepolo, Master Draftsman, exhib. cat., Udine, Castello di Udine, and Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum, 1996-1997, p. 247, no. 86 [Italian edition titled Giandomenico Tiepolo. Maestria e gioco. Disegni dal mondo].
B. Ford, ‘The Ford Collection’, Walpole Society, LX, II, 1998, pp. 99-101, no. RBF131 (catalogued by F. Russell).
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. 126 (catalogue by B. Ford).
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, Eighteenth Century Venice, 1951, no. 138n (note by F.J.B. Watson).
Venice, Palazzo Giardini, Mostra del Tiepolo, 1951, p. 188, no. 143 or 144 (catalogue by G. Lorenzetti).
Montreal, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Five Centuries of Drawings, 1953, no. 65, ill.
Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Tiepolo. Ironia e comico, 2004, p. 185, no. 144, ill. (note by A.M. Gealt).
Venice, Palazzo Ducale, and Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Canaletto & Venezia, 2018-2019, no. VII.14, ill. [French edition titled Éblouissante Venise. Venise, les arts et l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle].

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Henry Pettifer
Henry Pettifer

Lot Essay

Punchinello’s love for gnocchi is here illustrated in a composition which seems to belong to the scenes of ‘social and official life’ (Byam Shaw, op. cit., 1962, p. 56). Giambattista Tiepolo’s depictions of Punchinellos include almost without exception the soft dumplings or the typical pots used to cook them in (for an example, see fig. 2); George Knox has stressed the importance for these scenes of the Verona festival of ‘Venerdì gnoccolare’, in which inhabitants of the neighbourhood of San Zeno dressed up and invited the city’s Podestà to their quarter and enjoy food and drink (‘Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings: Satire, or Labor of Love?’, in Satire in the 18th Century, New York and London, 1983, pp. 131-133, 142-144; and ‘The Punchinello Drawings of Giambattista Tiepolo, in Interpretazioni veneziane. Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, Venice, 1984, pp. 439-446). In Domenico Tiepolo’s drawings gnocchi appear less frequently, but he did reserve a prominent place for a dish of dumplings and a collection of cooking pots in the title page of the Punchinello series (see fig. 1).

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