Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)

Caricature of a cavalier in profile to the left holding a muff

Details
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)
Caricature of a cavalier in profile to the left holding a muff
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, corners cut
8¼ x 4¾ in. (206 x 120 mm.)
Provenance
Possibly Count Bernardino Corniani.
Possibly Marquess of Breadalbane, Langton House, Duns, Berwickshire; Dowells, Edinburgh, 25 March 1925, part of lot 1004.
John Grant.
Arthur Kay; Christie's London, 9 April 1943, part of lot 243.

Lot Essay

The present drawing was part of an album of 107 caricatures from Arthur Kay's collection, which was inscribed with the title Tomo terzo de Caricature. The album, dispersed at Christie's in 1943, was bought by Kay in 1926 from John Grant, a bookseller in Edinburgh, who had purchased it at Langton House in Berwickshire, G. Knox, Tiepolo, a Bicentenary Exhibition, Cambridge, 1970, no. 87. Professor Knox advanced the hypothesis that this album could be one of the eight succinctly mentioned in Algarotti's inventory in 1840: 'otto grandi libri di cento e più pagine l'uno', two of which were described in a sale catalogue of 1854 as 'due grossi libri' with 'una copiosa collezione di disegni umoristici del Tiepolo', M. Levey, 'Two Footnotes to any Tiepolo monograph', The Burlington Magazine, 1962, CIV, p. 119.
The caricatures from the Kay album are dated by Knox to 1754-1762. Three drawings from the same album were exhibited at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, Tiepolo and his Circle, 1997, nos. 81-83.

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