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Lot Essay
This small bozzetto was first published by Morassi (loc. cit.) who dated it to circa 1720 and regarded it as a preparatory sketch for a ceiling decoration that had either been destroyed or was never executed. Subsequent opinions have differed over whether the bozzetto was for a ceiling or a wall decoration. In the 1971 exhibition Venise aux XVIII siècle held in Paris, Professor Pierre Rosenberg proposed the theory that the sketch was the first idea for an elaborate ceiling in the Palazzo Archinto, Milan, painted in 1730-1 (subsequently destroyed during World War II and known only from photographs). This theory allows for the fact that the decoration may originally have been intended for a wall fresco, before modifications to the scheme meant that the subject was transposed to the ceiling.
The story of Phaeton and his father Apollo is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, II, 35. Phaeton sought out Apollo in the palace of Helios where he pleaded with his father to allow him to drive his chariot for one day. Apollo was unwilling to grant this wish, knowing the dangers of such a journey, but he reluctantly acquiesced to the foolhardy request. Phaeton mounted the golden chariot and set off across the sky, but was soon in trouble. Unable to control the chariot, which caught fire, he plunged to his death in the River Eridanus. The subject lent itself very well to ceiling decorations and Tiepolo returned to it on a number of occasions. He first treated the subject in the frescoes for the Palazzo Baglione, Massanzago, near Padua, painted before 1720. While two other possible sketches for the Palazzo Archinto ceiling are in the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna and the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham (see K. Christiansen, ed., Giambattista Tiepolo, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, nos. 47a-b, pp. 292-5).
The story of Phaeton and his father Apollo is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, II, 35. Phaeton sought out Apollo in the palace of Helios where he pleaded with his father to allow him to drive his chariot for one day. Apollo was unwilling to grant this wish, knowing the dangers of such a journey, but he reluctantly acquiesced to the foolhardy request. Phaeton mounted the golden chariot and set off across the sky, but was soon in trouble. Unable to control the chariot, which caught fire, he plunged to his death in the River Eridanus. The subject lent itself very well to ceiling decorations and Tiepolo returned to it on a number of occasions. He first treated the subject in the frescoes for the Palazzo Baglione, Massanzago, near Padua, painted before 1720. While two other possible sketches for the Palazzo Archinto ceiling are in the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna and the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham (see K. Christiansen, ed., Giambattista Tiepolo, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, nos. 47a-b, pp. 292-5).