Exhibition of the Month: The Tiepolo Family in Indiana

Happy Thanksgiving from the staff here at Drawing magazine and Artist’s Network!

Just like a Thanksgiving dinner, our drawing exhibition of the month for November brings family together—specifically a father and son who are among the most accomplished artists of their age. The exhibition “Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo: Master Drawings from the Anthony J. Moravec Collection” is on view through February 5, 2017 at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, in Bloomington.

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: The Second Prayer, by Domenico Tiepolo, ca. 1785, pen-and-brown-ink wash over black chalk on paper. All images this exhibition collection Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington, Indiana.

The exhibition centers on a set of 12 New Testament drawings by Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804), part of a now-scattered cycle of 320 drawings. Domenico’s large pen, brush, and ink drawings were dispersed after his death, and the actual series to which these individual drawings belonged was not known until recent scholarship pieced it together. Following Anthony J. Moravec’s 2010 gift, the Eskenazi Museum has become the world’s third-largest repository of works from the series, after the Museé du Louvre and the Morgan Library and Museum.

A Centaur Playing With Punchinellos, by Domenico Tiepolo, ca. 1770, pen-and-brown-ink wash over black chalk on paper.

“This exhibition will reintroduce our audiences to the richness of the Italian Old Master tradition, and especially to the work of Domenico Tiepolo—a unique voice among his contemporaries whose works on paper are notable for their synthesis of Biblical and mythological subject matter with the visual vocabulary of 18th-century Venetian life,” said Adelheid Gealt, the exhibition’s curator. “By showcasing our world-renowned holdings of Tiepolo’s New Testament series, the Eskenazi Museum is contributing to an ongoing reassessment of this important body of work.”

The Flight Into Egypt, by Giambattista Tiepolo, 1735-1740, pen-and-brown-ink wash over traces of black chalk on paper.

In addition to works from Domenico’s New Testament series, the Moravec collection also includes important works on paper by his father, Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770), who is widely regarded as one of the greatest draftsmen of the 18th century. Works by Ubaldo Gandolfi and Giuseppe Bernardino Bison round out the exhibition, along with a drawing by Jacopo Palma il Giovane.

Study for St. John the Baptist Preaching, by Palma Giovane, ca. 1620, pen-and-brown-ink wash on paper.

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