Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)

The Madonna and Child

Details

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice 1696-1770 Madrid)
The Madonna and Child
oil on canvas, oval
21 x 16½ in. (53.3 x 41.9 cm.)

Provenance

Brass collection, Venice, 1940.
Klaus Maus, Zrich (label on the reverse).

Literature

A. Morassi, Le Arti, 1942, p. 90, fig. 5.
A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London, 1962, p. 61, fig. 73.

Sale room notice

Additional information:
EXHIBITED:
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Schönheit des 18. Jahrhunderts, 1955, no. 307. LITERATURE:
A. Pallucchini, L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo, 1968, no. 24 where dated 1720-2, 'la Madonna è nobilissima, nel volto e nella mano'.
G.M. Pilo, 'Per la giovinezza di G.B. Tiepolo', Arte documento, 10, 1996, fig. 61.
M. Gemin and F. Pedrocco, Catalogo dell' opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo, 1993, no.29.

Lot Essay

This particular canvas is dated 1720-22 by Morassi. He comments (op. cit., 1962) that it has 'much in common' with that recorded in the collection of C. Ajmone Marsan at Biella (op. cit., p. 6) and is 'still Piazzettesque'. The characterisation is indeed clearly indebted to the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, but the subtle modelling of the faces testifies to Tiepolo's personal powers of observation. The poignant intimacy of the composition is perhaps unmatched in any of Tiepolo's other small devotional pictures of the period: the Madonna's face is illuminated by light reflected from the forehead and pale hair of her Child; and He, although His head falls back in sleep, holds in His right hand a small cross - with apparently unequal arms - in allusion to His subsequent Passion.

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