Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,
 
Italian 1696-1770-
 
Three Punchinelli...

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,

Italian 1696-1770-

Three Punchinelli gathered around a gnocchi pot;

black chalk, pen and brown ink and wash on paper,

bears ownership inscription Tiepolo / Collection Jolimont.' (lower edge),

20.5 x 23 cm.

Provenance:

François Gabriel Théodore Basset de Jolimont, Paris (1787-1854).

Julius Lessing, German art historian and first director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin (1843-1908).

Private Collection.

Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 May 1938, lot 109 (bought by [Felix?] Harbord.

With Charles E. Slatkin Gallery, New York (from 1956 until at least 1963).

Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 27 June 1974, lot 64.

Where purchased by the present owners (Private Collection, UK).

Exhibited:

New York, 1963, plate III, attributed to Domenico, (illustrated).

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 'Special Exhibition for the College Association', 18 January-16 April 1965.

Literature:

G. Knox, Domenico Tiepolos Punchinello Drawings: Satire, or Labor of Love?, in Satire in the Eighteenth Century, New York and London, 1983, pp.133 and 140, fig.7 (illustrated).

G. Knox, 'The Punchinello Drawings of Giambattista Tiepolo', in Interpretazioni veneziane. Studi di storia dellarte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, Venice, 1984, p.445, fig.20 (illustrated).

V. Sears Goldman, 'The Most Beautiful Punchinelli in the World: A comprehensive Study of the Punchinello Drawings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, (unpublished doctoral dissertation), Princeton University, New Jersey, 2012, pp.406-412, fig.8.1 (illustrated).

Engraved:

Etched by Georg Friedrich Schmidt (1712-1775), Three Punchinelli Cooking Gnocchi, inscribed GFS; fec. Acqua forti 1751 (lower left) [See Maria Santifaller, In Margine alle ricerche Tiepoleche… in Arte Veneta, XXX, 1976, pp.204-9, fig.2. See also David Tunick, catalogue no.11, Italian Prints of the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1981, p.291].

Note: The present work is one of a series of studies of Punchinello by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Here, a hunchbacked Punchinello figure is depicted sitting on a rock, downcast, with his elbows resting on his thighs. Meanwhile, his two Punchinelli friends attend to and stir a steaming pot of gnocchi whilst keeping an eye on their indisposed companion. The conical cooking pot enjoys its important compositional function as an inverted Punchinello hat, and the seated figure holds the traditional long wooden stick for stirring the gnocchi. Various pencilled pentimenti are apparent, revealing the outlines of an additional Punchinello and a Punchinello hat just to the left of the seated figure.

The celebrated, buffoon character of the Punchinello originated in popular theatrical productions or Commedia dellArte in the 1600s. A century later, Tiepolos representations of this clownish figure hunchbacked and clad in a white suit with a tall sugarloaf hat and beaked nose cooking or eating gnocchi, are thought to point to the festival of Verona on the last Friday of Carnival, the so-called venerdì gnoccolare, during which vast quantities of gnocchi and red wine were consumed before the beginning of Lent the following week (B. Aikema, Tiepolo and his Circle, exh. cat., New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library and elsewhere, 1996). The festival, which allegedly originated in the early 16th Century with the principal aim of distributing food and wine to the poor, is particularly associated with Veronas church of San Zeno and its impoverished neighbourhood. The young boys from San Zeno would dress up in costume and invite the mayor to the town square for a glass of wine and gnocchi, after which the entire town would drink and eat until dawn. The vast quantities of consumed gnocchi were to the detriment of the participants digestion, often succumbing to gnoc-colonità, exemplified, perhaps, by a drawing of a Drunken Punchinello lying on his back, in the Eugene Thaw Collection, New York (F. Stampfle and C.D. Denison, Drawings in the Collection of Mr and Mrs Eugene V. Thaw, exh. cat., New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, and elsewhere, 1976, no.48).

The present work is viewable in the context of a distinctive group of documented Punchinello drawings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo around thirty-six such drawings, with at least two paintings and two etchings and the artists preoccupation with the theme encompasses the years from the late 1720s until the early 1760s. George Knox suggests a Veronese collector, Scipione Maffei, as a possible patron or early catalyst for these works (Knox, 1984, p.443) and indeed Tiepolo is known to have visited Verona twice. The drawings were immediately sought after by connoisseurs, as evidenced by Count Francesco Algarotti's proud boast in a letter to Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1761 that he possesses 'the most beautiful Punchinellos in the world, from the hand of our famous Tiepoletto' (quoted in B. Aikema op.cit. p.198).

The present venerdì gnoccolare scene was etched by Georg Friedrich Schmidt in 1751, and there exists, too, a larger pen and ink copy, likely also by Schmidt and presumably conceived as a preparatory aid to his etching (V.Sears Goldman, 2012, figs 8.1 and 8.2, illustrated). Comparable sheets include those in the Art Institute of Chicago, c.1740-52 [1972.108]; Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris [no.393]; and the drawing sold at Christies, London, 31 Jan. 2013, lot 75, formerly in the collection of Dominique-Vivant. Bernard Aikema has noted the similarities in style and technique between the present work and no.79 in his 1996 catalogue (the Christies 2013 sheet), and suggests that the present work, too, likely dates to the late 1930s. Indeed, the drawing exhibits painterly washes in two tones that recall the artists other drawings from the second half of the 1730s, and, of course, the 1751 Schmidt engraving precludes categorising it as a work from the later 1750s or 1760s.

The subject of the Punchinello was one which was also to inspire Giovanni Battistas son Domenico, who, unlike his father, generally portrayed his Punchinelli engaged in everyday activities: Giambattistas apparent interest in Punchinellos [is] exclusively when they are making gnocchi… Domenico likes them doing all sorts of things (William L. Vance, Tiepolos Drawings in American Collections, 1997, p.24). Marcia Vetrocq further elaborates on the differences between father and sons Punchinelli: In the [Domenico] drawings, Punchinello seems to be an extension of Giambattistas caricatures, an extreme exploration between physical deformity and unspecified expression. Granted a minimum of props and the barest spatial indications, Giambattistas Punchinellos inhabit a quiet world and form a discrete society in which few other characters intrude… Compared to the gangly sportsmen and diligent tradesmen of the Divertimento [Domenicos Punchinello series "Entertainment for Children"], Giambattistas Punchinellos are diminutive in size, covert in demeanour…, as insubstantial as his angels and putti, Domenicos as factual as the quacks and peddlers of his piazza scenes. (Maria E. Vetrocq, Domenico Tiepolos Punchinello Drawings, 1979, p.27).

In the Sothebys catalogues and Knox literature, the present work is variously and erroneously described as formerly belonging to the Jollimont, Jolimnet, and the Folinoux Collections, presumably based on a misreading of the inscription in the lower right corner of the sheet. Research has however revealed the previous owner as François Gabriel Théodore Basset de Jolimont (1787-1854), an artist and antiquarian, as well as a known collector of works on paper and paintings (V. Sears Goldman, 2012, p.406).

We are grateful to Professor Bernard Aikema who holds the attribution most likely on the inspection of a high resolution photograph of the drawing.