Title Page to the Punchinello Series

Artist Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727 - 1804)

Dateca. 1800

MediumBrown ink and wash over black chalk on paper

DimensionsUnframed: 11 1/2 × 16 inches (29.21 × 40.64 cm)
Framed: 20 × 26 × 1 1/4 inches (50.8 × 66.04 × 3.18 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number32-193/9

SignedRecto, b.r.corner: "Dom. Tiepolo"

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris 1921.

Loan Exhibition of Old Master Drawings from Midwestern Museums, Detroit Institute of Arts, June 1-September 15, 1950, no. 49, as Scene in the Life of Punchinello.

The Tiepolos: Painters to Princes and Prelates, Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, January 8-February 19, 1978; Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, March 19-May 7, 1978, no. 188.

Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN, September 2-October 6, 1979; Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford, CA, November 13-December 30, 1979; The Frick Collection, New York, January 22-March 30, 1980, no. 1, as Title Page.

Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Washington University Gallery of Art, Saint Louis, MO, September 22-December 3, 1989, unnumbered, as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 17-March 25, 1990, no cat., as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 49, as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no cat., as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Tiepolo: ironia e comico, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore, Italy, March 9-May 12, 2004, as Frontespizio.

Dürer to Tiepolo: Works on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 12, 2012-June 9, 2013, no cat., as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Gallery Label

This important drawing is a frontispiece to Tiepolo's series of more than 100 drawings depicting the life and death of Punchinello, a character from the popular theatrical tradition, the Italian commedia dell'arte. The Italian inscription on the tomb-like monument translates as "amusement for the young," a reference to Punchinello's appeal among children. Punchinello is shown contemplating the monument holding a doll in his right arm. The nervous pen work in the contours, especially around the fur cap and muff, is typical of the artist and conveys a frenetic vitality characteristic of the Rococo age.

Provenance

Purchased from Old Master and Other Drawings sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, London, July 6, 1920, lot 41, as One hundred and two Carnival Scenes, with many figures, by P. and D. Colnaghi, London, 1920–1932 at the latest;

With Richard Owen, Paris, by September 26–December 1, 1932 [1];

Purchased from Owen, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.

NOTES:

[1] See letter from Harold Woodbury Parsons, art advisor to NAMA, to J. C. Nichols, NAMA Trustee, September 26, 1932, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Catalogue of Old Master and Other Drawings (London: Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, July 6-7, 1920), 9, as One hundred and two Carnival Scenes, with many figures.

Antonio Morassi, “Domenico Tiepolo,” Emporium (June 1941): 282n1.

Loan Exhibition of Old Master Drawings from Midwestern Museums, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1950), unpaginated, as Scene in the Life of Punchinello.

James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo (Boston: Boston Book and Art Shop, 1962), 52n1, 54, 56n2, 58, 91, (repro.), as Title-Page to the Punchinello Series.

Adriano Mariuz, Giandomenico Tiepolo (Venice: Alfieri, 1971), unpaginated, (repro.), as Frontespizio della serie di Pulcinella.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 179, (repro.), as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Jean Cailleux, “Centaurs, Fauns, Female Fauns, and Satyrs among the Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo,” The Burlington Magazine 116, no. 855, L’Art du Dix-huitième Siècle supplement (June 1974): iiin16.

John David Farmer and Richard Mühlberger, The Tiepolos: Painters to Princes and Prelates, exh. cat. (Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1978), 116, 121, (repro.).

Adelheid M. Gealt, “Two New Punchinello Drawings by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo,” Arte Veneta 33 (1979): 155n9, as Divertimento per li Regazzi.

Marcia E. Vetrocq, Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings, exh. cat. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Art Museum, 1979), 31, 38-39, (repro.), as Title Page.

John T. Spike, “Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions. New York: Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings at The Frick Collection,” The Burlington Magazine 122, no. 925 (April 1980): 283, 285, (repro.), as Divertimento per li Regazzi.

J.D. Browning, ed., Satire in the 18^th Century (New York: Garland, 1983), 126, 134, 144, (repro.), as Divertimento per li Regazzi.

David Rosand, Interpretazioni veneziane: studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro (Venice: Arsenale, 1984), 439, (repro.), as Divertimento per li Regazzi.

Massimo Gemin, “L’iconografia dei mesi e una serie di disegni nell’ambito di Giandomenico Tiepolo,” Arte Veneta 40 (1986): 147n21.

Adriano Mariuz, “I disegni di Pulcinella di Giandomenico Tiepolo,” Arte Veneta 40 (1986): 265, (repro.), as Divertimento per li Regazzi Carte No 104.

Adelheid M. Gealt, Domenico Tiepolo: The Punchinello Drawings (New York: George Braziller, 1986), 17, 19, 26, (repro.), as Title Page.

Roger Ward and Mark S. Weil, Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 7, 10, 41, (repro.), as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Linda Wolk-Simon, Italian Old Master Drawings: From the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exh. cat. (Gainesville, FL: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, 1991), 145, 147n2, as Divertimento per li ragazzi.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 108, (repro.), as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

James Christen Steward, ed., The Mask of Venice: Masking, Theater, and Identity in the Art of Tiepolo and His Time, exh. cat. (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, 1996), 45, (repro.), as Title Page—Divertimento per li regazzi.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 11, 27, 138, 143, 160-62, (repro.), as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Richard Beresford and Peter Raissis, The James Fairfax Collection of Old Master Paintings, Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2003), (repro.).

Adriano Mariuz and Giuseppe Pavanello, Tiepolo: ironia e comico, exh. cat. (Venice: Marsilio, 2004), unpaginated, (repro.), as Frontespizio.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 197, (repro.), as Title Page to the Punchinello Series.

Giorgio Agamben and Martin Rueff, Polichinelle ou Divertissement pour les jeunes gens en quatre scènes (Paris: Éditions Macula, 2017), (repro.).

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