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Landscape with lions and men with a ladder

Maker

(artist)
1727-1804

Title

Date of Production

c. 1790-1795

Medium

black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash on laid paper, with brown ink framing lines, on a historic support

Dimensions

Height: 28.8 cm
Width: 41.2 cm

Accession Number

D.1952.RW.2675

Mode of Acquisition

Robert Clermont Witt, bequest, 1952

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

Of the talented Tiepolo family, it was Giovanni Domenico who was chiefly responsible for introducing images of everyday life into the studio. In this finished drawing, one of a series of scenes of contemporary activities, two men are observing lions in a pit. Four of the lions were exactly repeated on an over-door fresco in the artist's villa at Zianigo near Padua. As he rarely drew animals from life, they were probably copied from prints or from his father Giovanni Battista's paintings.

Notes

Four of the lions seen here are repeated in a fresco in Tiepolo's Villa in Zianigo, begun in 1759. The lion lying down in the foreground also appears in two other drawings, one in Princeton (acc. no. x1948-889), and the other in Chicago (acc. no. 1922.5416) (both undated).

Provenance

Couturier; Juan Jorge Peoli, New York (1825-1893), L.2020; F.R. Meatyard (London); purchased there by Colnaghi (London), 20 April 1932; purchased there by Sir Robert Witt, London (1872-1952), L.2228b, 12 April 1934 (£15); Witt Bequest 1952

Exhibition History

The Witt Collection - Four centuries of drawings, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 03/04/2004-20/06/2004

Domenico Tiepolo: maestria e gioco, Castello di Udine; Indiana University Art Museum, 14/09/1996-09/03/1997

Eighteenth-century Venice, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 03/01/1951-18/04/1951 ...More

Old Masters from the Witt Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 01/01/1943-01/05/1943

Eton, 1939 ...Less

Literature

Domenico Tiepolo: maestria e gioco. Disegni dal mondo, Castello di Udine and Indiana University Art Museum, 1996 - 1997
cat. no. 140
no. 140
ill.

Byam Shaw, James, Selected writings, Colnaghi, London 1968
p. 122
pl. 85

Inscriptions

Watermark: unable to check due to support.

Inscription: Recto: lower right edge, brown ink, signed by the artist: “Domo Tiepolo f”. Support (historic), Verso: upper left corner, graphite, underlined, erased and hard to read: “YA.”; centre, graphite, circled: “75”; lower right, brown ink: “590-”; lower right, black ink: “G.D. Tiepolo_ 1725-1795. / Couturier Coll.".

Collector's mark: Support (historic), Verso: lower right, stamped in black ink: Juan Jorge Peoli (L.2020); Sir Robert Witt (L.2228b).

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