Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)

The head of Giulio Contarini, after Alessandro Vittoria

Details

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)
The head of Giulio Contarini, after Alessandro Vittoria
red and white chalk on blue paper
11¾ x 7.7/8 in. (274 x 196 mm.)

Provenance

Giovanni Domenico Bossi, with associated price code 'N° 2227. Xrs 36', and by descent to
Maria Theresa Karoline Bossi.
Karl Christian Friedrich Beyerlen, probably his associated number '752' (verso); H.G. Gutekunst, Stuttgart, 27-8 March 1882.
Anon. sale, Christie's London, 2 July 1985, lot 74 (£19,440).

Literature

G. Knox and T. Martin, 'Giambattista Tiepolo: A Series of Chalk Drawings after Alessandro Vittoria's Bust of Giulio Contarini', Master Drawings, 1987, XXV, pp. 160 and 163, note 23, pl. 21.
B. Aikema, Tiepolo and His Circle, exhib. cat., The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and elsewhere, 1996, p. 268.

Lot Essay

This drawing is one of a series of fifteen executed by Tiepolo after Alessandro Vittoria's bust of Giulio Contarini of 1576. The drawings are dated by George Knox and Thomas Martin to 1742-3. Most of the drawings share the same provenance as the present one and carry similar pencil numbers. The sheet sold as the previous lot to the present sheet at Christie's in 1985 bore the pencil number '753'.
The marble prototype of the Procuratore di S. Marco is on the left side chancel of the Church of Santa Maria del Giglio in Venice, G. Knox and T. Martin, op. cit., fig. 1. Because of the inaccessibilty of the bust high on the wall, George Knox and Thomas Martin suggested that these drawings were executed after a terracotta replica such as the one formerly with Heim Gallery in London rather than the marble bust (op. cit., figs. 2-3).
Tiepolo executed a similar series of drawings after a bust of Palma Giovane by Vittoria, B. Aikema, op. cit., nos. 95-6.

More from Important Old Master Drawings

View All