A hermit saint reading in the wilderness

Details

CIRCLE OF GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO (VENICE 1727-1804 MADRID)
Tiepolo, G.B.
A hermit saint reading in the wilderness
black chalk, brush and brown ink, watermark cross on a mount
16 1/8 x 9 5/8 in. (41 x 24.5 cm)

Provenance

Prince Aleksey Nikolayevich (‘Alexis’) Orloff (1867-1916), Paris; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 29-30 April 1920, lot 164.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 4 May 1938, lot 112.
with R.E.A. Wilson, London.
Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882-1950), London; Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 1953, lot 67 (as Alessandro Magnasco).
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 5 July 1976, lot 68 (as follower of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo).
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 9 January 1996, lot 62 (as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo).

Literature

G. Knox, ‘The Orloff Album of Tiepolo Drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, CIII, no. 699, July 1961, pp. 270, 274, ill.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The Orloff sale catalogue lists this sheet as part of an album of about 96 drawings by Tiepolo and his workshop, described in these terms: ‘the drawings included in this catalogue have never been published. Kept for many years in an album, protected from light, they have been matted only very recently and they owe to this particular fortune their extraordinary freshness.’ The origins of the album are obscure, but we know that already by 1732 albums of drawings assembled in Tiepolo’s workshop were highly esteemed by collectors. The drawings in the album were presumably kept by the family until their departure for Spain in 1761 (Knox, op. cit., 1961, p. 270). Very few of the drawings are preparatory for paintings. Given their large format, confidence of execution, and pictorial qualities, they were most likely conceived as independent art works.

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