Caricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies

Caricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Domenico Tiepolo's proficiency as a caricaturist is well exemplified by this sheet, which if it were not signed, might easily be taken for the work of his father, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Above the standing gentleman appears a bouquet of the character heads that occur in many of Domenico's paintings and etchings; at the left border there are sketches of a hand and the tip of a quiver. As Filippo Pedrocco observed in 1990, at least two of the character heads seem to have been preparatory for the series of engraving named "Raccolta di teste" (Collection of heads): the barbed head on the top right corresponds to one in no. 30 and the old man's head on the top left corresponds to one in no. 21 of the "Raccolta di teste" series (see Aldo Rizzi, The Etchings of the Tiepolo, London, 1971, pp. 404-5, no. 221, fig. 221; pp. 396-7, no. 212, fig. 212). As both sheets belong to the second part of the "Raccolta" published after Domenico Tiepolo's return from Spain in 1770, Pedrocco proposed a dating of the drawing - and of the engravings - between 1772 and 1774. Dirk Breiding (2010) has confirmed that the horizontal, phallic, object on the left is not a quiver, as identified by Jacob Bean and other scholars.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Caricature of a Gentleman and Other StudiesCaricature of a Gentleman and Other StudiesCaricature of a Gentleman and Other StudiesCaricature of a Gentleman and Other StudiesCaricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.