European Drawings - 1, Catalogue of the Collections

GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO

48 Flight into Egypt

r

Various Studies

v

Pen and brown ink, brown wash, and black chalk (recto);

faint red chalk (verso); H: 30.4 cm (12 in.); W: 45.3 cm

(17'3/1 6 in.)

85.00.409

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: None.

PROVENANCE: Prince Alexis Orloff, Paris (sale, Galerie

Georges Petit, Paris, April 29-30, 1920, lot 88); sale,

Sotheby's, London, July 13, 1972, lot 35; art market,

New York.

EXHIBITIONS: None.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. Knox, "The Orloff Album of Tie-

polo Drawings," Burlington Magazine 103, no. 699 (June

1961), pp. 269-275.

THIS SHEET ONCE FORMED PART OF THE FAMOUS AL-

bum of Tiepolo drawings in the Orloff collection, which

were dispersed in 1920. Within the Orloff album the Mu-

seum's drawing was among three dozen religious com-

positions of comparable scale and medium which Knox

has grouped together in the period 1725-1735 (1961, p.

273). He believes them to have been made as independent

works of art, not preparatory to paintings or prints.

Within this larger group there are six renderings of the

theme of the Flight into Egypt (1961, nos. 24-29). This

drawing was first sketched broadly in black chalk and

then drawn in pen and wash. A considerable amount of

the black chalk underdrawing survives, especially for the

boatman and the background view.

Il8 ITALIAN SCHOOL • G. B. TIEPOLO