The year 2004 marks the passing of 200 years since the death of Giandomenico Tiepolo, a major 18th-century Venetian artist whose frescoes for the guest quarters at Villa Valmarana in Vicenza and for his own villa in Zianigo (now conserved at Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice) are among the greatest European masterpieces of his time.
Tiepolo is not known for his frescoes alone. Studies have revealed the importance and the value of the artist’s drawings – be they sketches of contemporary life that caustically portray the society of the day or interpretations of the figure of Punchinello, a sort of mirror image of ordinary man and a bitter portrait of the ‘laughable’ side of history.
There is also a group of male and female caricatures by Giandomenico Tiepolo. These works revive the models employed by his father Giambattista, whose cariacatures and drawings of Punchinello provided one of the most unique and visually striking examples of the art of 18th-century Europe.
Another example is provided by the caricatures of the elder Anton Maria Zanetti conserved at the Cini Foundation. These drawings reveal yet another ‘ludicrous’ aspect of 18th-century Venetian caricature, bound in greater part to the world of theatre. Unlike the Tiepolo’s rigorously ‘anonymous’ caricatures, the identity of the figures portrayed here is highly evident.
The various drawings and prints are accompanied by important paintings by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, as well as Marco Ricci and Francesco Guardi.
Many of the works on exhibit have never – or at least not recently – been shown Italy. Examples of these include Giambattista Tiepolo’s Punchinello’s kitchen, conserved in Maidstone, or Giandomenico Tiepolo’s two paintings portraying the Minuet and the Tooth puller, now at the Louvre and last shown in Venice in 1951.
Important groups of drawings by the Tiepolo have been loaned by the drawing collections at Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Civic Museums of History and Art of Trieste and the Correr Museum in Venice, as well as numerous museums throughout the world, both in Europe (London, Oxford, Paris, Amiens, Montpellier, Berlin, Mainz, St Petersburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Szezecin) and in the United States (Cleveland, Bloomington, Kansas City, Stanford, Washington and, above all, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, which has lent twenty-two works to the exhibition).

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
3 September – 5 December 2004

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The exhibition has been realised with the support of

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