Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)

Ganymede: design for garden statuary

Details

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)
Tiepolo, G.B.
Ganymede: design for garden statuary
inscribed 'ganimede' and numbered '5'
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, fragmentary watermark device
11.3/8 x 7 in. (290 x 195 mm.)

Provenance

M. Kende; Paris, 25 February 1952, lot 111.
Galerie Cailleux (their stamp; not in Lugt).

Literature

J. Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, under no. 283, note 3.

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Cailleux, Giambattista, Domenico et Lorenzo Tiepolo, 1974, no. 6.

Lot Essay

This is part of a series of mythological sculpture-like drawings. These represent mostly individual figures standing on pedestals with their identity and a number inscribed below. The highest known number is 30. George Knox has connected seven similar drawings of figures on pedestals in the Victoria and Albert Museum to the sculptures in the garden of the Villa Cordellina at Monteghio Maggiore, where Tiepolo worked in 1743, G. Knox, Catalogue of the Tiepolo Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1975, nos. 74-80. The drawing before this one in the series, 4, Hercules, was sold in these Rooms, 12 January 1995, lot 55, and the one following, 6, Pluto, was exhibited in 1997, B. Aikema, Tiepolo and his Circle, exhib. cat., The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and elsewhere, 1997, no. 53. Further drawings are in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin and the Fondation Custodia, Paris, J. Byam Shaw, op. cit., no. 283, with a list of other drawings in the series.