Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Venice 1727 - 1804
29
Caricature of a Man in a Long Cloak, Kneeling at the End of his Bed to Pray
Pen and dark brown ink and wash.
178 x 154 mm (7 x 6 1 /8 in.)
Provenance: John Winter, Florence.
Giandomenico Tiepolo inherited his father’s love of
making caricatures, in a playful and gently satirical
but sometimes also poignant manner. Single figures
such as this perhaps make fun of actual characters.
Here, Giandomenico’s sure thick-nibbed pen traces
with few lines and vibrant dabs of wash the faintly
absurd figure of a small man in a voluminous cloak:
large feet, small head, hands clasped in prayer as he
kneels at the foot of his capacious and empty bed. It
belongs to a group of such figures, often seen from
the back and with slightly ludicrous appearances; long
feet, thin legs or large bewigged or hatted heads. Some
of these single figure caricatures have been considered
the work of Giambattista, however, comparison with
a caricature now in the Metropolitan Museum, of a
gentleman in profile with other head studies 1 , which is
actually signed by Giandomenico, allowed for certain
single figures to be reassigned to the son, including
several such sheets in the Museo Civico at Trieste 2 . The
present work may be compared to the Metropolitan
drawing, particularly in the application of wash.
Many of Giambattista’s caricatures were bound in an
album referred to as the Tomo terzo di caricature 3 .
This collection - and possibly other similar albums,
presumably Tomo uno and secondo - was certainly
in the possession of Giandomenico for a considerable
time as a number of his own large scale drawings
contain figures copied from it.
two decades were devoted to drawing and the creation
of various magnificent series. The Large Biblical series
had formed his first huge project in the 1780s followed
by the Scenes from Contemporary Life, to which this,
and other single figure caricatures, compare most
obviously 4 . The third series of highly finished, narrative
drawings, belonging to his final decade focused on
the life of Punchinello and was entitled Divertimento
per li regazzi. Giandomenico’s delight in depicting
contemporary figures began with the frescoes in the
Villa Valmarana which date from 1757 and continued
in a number of wonderful easel paintings with genre
subjects. In the single figure caricatures and the
Scenes from Contemporary Life, as James Byam Shaw
described, he could explore the life and amusements
of the Bourgeoisie and would-be fashionable society to
his heart’s content, continuing, in the lightly mocking
style established by the Carracci, Guercino, Mola and
Bernini, and on to Ghezzi, Zanetti and Giambattista 5 .
Between 1780 and 1783, Giandomenico acted as
President of the Venetian Academy but after this,
he began to retire from life as a painter of grand
decorative projects and of the religious paintings
which had become his chief work in Venice. The next
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