drawing
- Museum number
- 1946,0713.915
- Description
-
A Franciscan monk (St Anthony of Padua ?) holding a book contemplating a cross
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, heightened with white (partly oxidised), over black chalk, on light brown paper
- Production date
- 1735 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 160 millimetres
-
Width: 122 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- A.E. Popham in Fenwick catalogue: 'the drawing obviously belongs to the immediate circle of Tiepolo, but it is doubtful whether it is by Giambattista himself'. There seems, however, no reason to doubt that it is by the artist as it goes well with other representations of monastic saints such as 'St Anthony of Padua holding the Christ Child' in the Horvitz collection, see 'The Jeffrey E. Horvitz Collection of Italian Drawings', Sotheby's, New York, 23 January 2008, lot 87 (now in the Ann Searle Bent collection, see G. Knox, in exhib. cat. (S. Folds McCullagh, 'Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 'Capturing the Sublime, Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque', 2012, no. 126). The Piazzetta-inspired chiaroscuro in the use of wash and fine strokes of white heightening in the present work is found in drawings datable to the first half of the 1730s, such as two studies of saints being beheaded and an 'Enthroned Madonna with Saints' in the Metropolitan Museum (J. Bean and W. Griswold, '18th century Italian drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art', New York, 1990, nos. 187-189) and it likely dates from the same period.
HC
Lit.: A.E. Popham, 'Catalogue of Drawings in the Collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., F.R.S., now in the possession of his Grandson, T. Fitzroy Phillipps Fenwick of Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham', London, 1935, p. 168, no. 2 (as Attributed to G.B. Tiepolo)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2006 Feb-May, London, Courtauld Galleries, 'All Spirits and Fire:...'
- Acquisition date
- 1946
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1946,0713.915
