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.

Caricature of a Sleeping Man

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
1696-1770

Caricature of a Sleeping Man

ca. 1755-1760
6 1/18 x 8 15/16 inches (156 x 228 mm)
Pen and black ink and wash.
2017.249

Thaw Collection.

Notes
The vast majority of Giambattista Tiepolo's surviving drawings were preserved in his studio and eventually mounted in albums bearing such descriptive titles as Vari pensieri (Various Studies), Sole figure vestite (Single Draped Figures), and Sole figure per softi (Single Figures for Ceilings). This particular sheet evidently belonged to another such album, Tomo terzo di caricature (Third Volume of Caricatures). Many of the artist's drawings eventually were inherited by his son Domenico, who toward the end of his life adapted Caricature of a Sleeping Man for the figure of the protagonist in The Last Illness of Punchinello (inv. no. 2017.258). --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Inscriptions/Markings
Watermark: letters "GB"? above trefoil.
Associated names
Kay, Arthur, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.
Bibliography
Thaw Catalogue Raisonné, 2017, no. 372, repr.
Denison, Cara D. et al. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw. Part II. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1985, no. 21.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department