- Museum number
- 1949,0411.89
- Description
-
Portrait of an unknown young man, head turned slightly to right
Red chalk, on blue-grey paper
- Production date
- 1753 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 328 millimetres
-
Width: 215 millimetres (approx)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- James Byam Shaw suggested in his 1962 monograph on Domenico Tiepolo that a group of Piazzetta-like bust-length studies of young men usually attributed to his father were by his sons. In his 1971 review of Tiepolo exhibitions the same author published it as Lorenzo noting that a drawing by the artist of the same model from a different angle is in the Fogg Museum, Harvard University (1940.312; G. Knox, in exhib. cat., Harvard, Fogg Museum, 'Tiepolo: drawings, mainly from American collections, by Giambattista Tiepolo and the members of his circle; a bicentenary exhibition, 1770 - 1970', 1970, no. 64. Knox suggested that the sitter might be Franz Ignaz Neumann (1733-85), son of the architect Balthasar who designed the residenz at Würzburg, and that he was the model for the young officer who sits in the front of the Europe section of the ceiling in the fresco above the staircase in the palace. This would imply that Lorenzo made the Harvard and BM drawings while he was assisting his father and brother painting the frescoes in Würzburg (1750-53). Byam Shaw commented on the implication of this dating for the present sheet in his 1971 review: 'this drawing is surprisingly good for Lorenzo aged seventeen; but it shows the same faults of construction and the same hesitant contours as the other head studies to which I have referred to' [nos. 63, 6466 and 67 in Fogg catalogue].
George Knox in his catalogue of the chalk drawings preferred an attribution to Giovanni Battista along with others in the Stroganoff Sketchbook (23 chalk drawings owned by the eponymous Russian count who died in Rome in 1910: Knox 1980, I, nos. L.1-24). For Knox the discovery that the majority of the Stroganoff drawings, including the present one (the copy is his no. H.12) , were copied in the so-called Würzburg third sketchbook in the Martin-von-Wagner Museum, Würzburg, led him to conclude that that they were originals by Giovanni Battista. For Knox the hand responsible for the Würzburg album was Lorenzo, a thesis largely accepted by Christel Thiem in her 1996 publication of the album. However comparison between the illustrations in Thiem's publication of the Stroganoff drawings and their counterparts in Würzburg suggest that none of them is sufficiently accomplished to be Giovanni Battista, and as a consequence both groups must be copied from now lost originals.This is the conclusion reached by Bernard Aikema in his entry on a drawing in the Fogg Art Museum that matches one in the Würzburg album.
HC
Lit.: J. Byam Shaw, 'The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo', London, 1962, p. 60; Idem, 'Tiepolo celebrations: three catalogues', "Master Drawings", 9, Autumn 1971, p. 270, fig. 5 (as Lorenzo); G. Knox, 'Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, the chalk drawings', Oxford, 1980, no. L.15, p. 198, under no. H.12, p. 175 (as Giovanni Battista)
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1949
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
According to Dodgson's inventory card, purchased by him from G.Nebehay for £100 (no date given)
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1949,0411.89
