Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

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Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
1696-1770
Saturn and Cupid
ca. 1737-1740
Pen and brown ink and wash, over black chalk, on paper.
10 9/16 x 12 7/16 inches (268 x 315 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.
IV, 125
Notes: 

Study for figures of Saturn and Cupid in the south portion of the ceiling in the Palazzo Clerici, Milan, painted in 1740.
This magisterial drawing depicts Saturn holding his scythe while clutching Cupid. Both figures correspond very closely to a detail in the fresco that Giambattista Tiepolo painted in 1740 in the gallery of the Palazzo Clerici, Milan. In the finished work, Cupid's left arm is outstretched toward Venus, goddess of love, who is shown seated nearby. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Regarding the drawings for Palazzo Clerici, at the Morgan and elsewhere, see William Barcham, Tiepolo's Pictorial Imagination: Drawings for Palazzo Clerici (New York, Morgan Drawing Institute, 2017).

Inscription: 

Watermark: trefoil on stem below letters "PA".

Provenance: 
Count Francesco Algarotti; probably by descent to his brother and heir, Count Bonomo Algarotti; his daughter Maria Algarotti-Corniani; her son Count Bernardino Corniani; Edward Cheney (no mark; see Lugt 444); Colonel Alfred Capel Cure (Cheney's brother-in-law); sale, London, Sotheby's, April 29, 1885, presumably part of lot 1024; Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see Lugt 1509); his son, J.P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.
Watermark: 
Associated names: 

Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Collection J. Pierpont Morgan: Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London: Privately printed, 1905-1912, IV, 125, repr.
Cambridge, Fogg Museum of Art, Venice in the Eighteenth Century, 1948, no. 36.
Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, The Pierpont Morgan Treasures, 1960, no. 81.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Drawings from New York Collections III, The 18th Century in Italy, 1971, p. 49, no. 91, repr.
Aikema, Bernard. Tiepolo and His Circle: Drawings in American Collections. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museum; New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996, no. 44, repr.

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