The last truly great Venetian artist of the period was Domenico Tiepolo, who lived until the first decade ofthe nineteenth century and saw the collapse of the Venetian Republic in 1797. In 1740 Domenico entered his father Giambattista’s busy workshop, where he rapidly became a key member. The influence of his father was profound, and many drawings by the younger Tiepolo relate to those of Giambattista, but Domenico’s tremulous pen work and layering of wash set his work apart from that of the older artist.
Between 1786 and 1790, Domenico Tiepolo executed a series of more than three hundred New Testament scenes. Six of the Morgan’s twenty-three sheets from the series are on display, including a moving Christ on the Mount of Olives, Saints Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate, and The Holy Family Arrives at the Robbers' Farm, an unusual subject derived from the Apocrypha.
In another series of about eighty large drawings the artist depicted scenes of Venetian life during the final years of the Republic. The six drawings from the series in the exhibition wittily describe the foibles and excesses of the artist’s contemporaries from all walks of life, including a quack dentist, a storyteller, a bride-to-be with her prospective mother-in-law, and bewigged magistrates.
Punchinellos with an Elephant
Pen and brown ink, with brown and ochre wash, over black chalk, on paper
11 5/8 x 16 3/16 inches (294 x 411 mm)
Signed at upper center, in pen and brown ink, Domo [o in superscript] Tiepolo
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1910; IV, 151b
Toward the very end of his life Domenico Tiepolo undertook one last, important series of drawings: theatrical vignettes chronicling birth, childhood, youthful adventures, middle age, illness, death, and resurrection of the Commedia dell’Arte character Punchinello.
Begun in 1797, the year the last doge stepped aside and the thousand-old Republic of Venice ceased to exist, these drawings are among the greatest achievements of eighteenth-century Venetian art.
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