GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO (VENICE 1727-1804)

This drawing is one of a group of sheets by Domenico depicting packed crowds of figures in antique Roman and Oriental dress. They appear to be spectators of some sort, and while the figures often gather in front of altars, their exact role or meaning remains unclear. Two other drawings from this group can be found in the Robert Lehman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1975.1.505 and 1975.1.507; see J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection. Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, nos. 159-160, ill.). As suggested by James Byam Shaw, Domenico seems to have taken his father’s etchings from the Capricci and Scherzi di fantasia series as inspiration. Those series were possibly made in 1743 and Byam Shaw has suggested that the drawings in the style of Lehman sheet cannot be dated much later than 1747, when the artist was twenty years of age.