Two Satyrs Reclining
Pen and brown ink, brown wash over black chalk.
183 x 267 mm.
(7 1/5 x 10 1/2 inches.)
Provenance: Baron L.A. de Schwiter (Lugt 1768).
Venice 1727 ~ 1804 Venice
Our drawing is one of a large series of pen and wash drawings of satyrs made by Tiepolo, about 1740, as part of an extensive repertoire of motifs to be used when needed for his fresco decorations. Fifteen of these sheets are preserved in the Museo Horne, Florence; another four are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; one each in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the École des Beaux Arts, Paris; The Courtauld Institute, London; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge and the John and Paul Herring collection, New York.1 Yet another sheet from this series, also once owned by Baron de Schwiter, turned up in the well-known de Boer collection.2
These satyrs (also referred to as fauns) were first used, in pairs, for the ceiling decoration in Palazzo Clerici, Milan (1740). Here the satyrs were painted over doorways in grisaille. In 1756–57 he painted these grisaille satyrs again along the edges of the Allegory of Matrimony in the Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, and several years later, in 1761–62, he used them in the Villa Pisani, Strã.
Our drawing comes closest to some of those in the Museo Horne.3 The figures on our sheet share the same quick line and blatant eroticism, although they are not in closely united pairs like those in the Museo Horne.
Giambatista Tiepolo, A Pair of Satyrs Laughing, 140 x 240mm (51/2 x 92/5 ins), Museo Horne, Florence.
1. Bernard Aikema, Tiepolo and His Circle, Drawings in American Collections, exh. cat.The Pierpont Morgan Library and Harvard University Art Museums, New York, 1996, p.136.
2. Collection sold at Christie's, London, 4 July, 1995, lot 71 illus.
3. L. Ragghianti Collobi, Disegni della Fondazione Horne, exh. cat., Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 1963, figs. 100–103.
