Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Sketch for a Ceiling Decoration Showing Two Lute-Playing Angels Sitting on a Balustrade

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
1727-1804

Sketch for a Ceiling Decoration Showing Two Lute-Playing Angels Sitting on a Balustrade

ca. 1754.
7 15/16 x 13 1/2 inches (201 x 343 mm)
Red chalk, with white chalk, on blue paper.
IV, 151f

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

Notes
There has long been confusion regarding the attribution of the large number of drawings in red (or, in some cases, black) chalk on blue paper that are connected with works painted by Giambattista Tiepolo in the early 1750s. The figures in this drawing, for example, correspond to a passage in the ceiling fresco that Giambattista painted in 1754-55 in the church of Santa Maria della Pietà, Venice. It would nevertheless appear that this sheet and others like it are copies (or record drawings) made not by Giambattista but by his son Domenico for future use in the Tiepolo studio. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed on verso, in pen and brown ink, "f. L. G. J. N-3260 // 173"; numbered in graphite, "743 // 61 // 8".
Associated names
Bossi, Giovanni Domenico, former owner.
Bossi, Maria Theresa Caroline, 1825-1881, former owner.
Beyerlen, Carl Christian Friedrich, 1826-1881, former owner.
Habich, Edward, 1818-1901, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Bibliography
Aikema, Bernard. Tiepolo and His Circle : Drawings in American Collections. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Art Museum ; New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996, no. 109, repr.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department