6606 - Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista

Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista Head of a bearded man. Black chalk, highlighted in white, on blue paper, mounted. 33.4 x 27.2 cm. Circa 1751/53. This monumental-looking head of a bearded elderly man comes from the important Tiepolo collection of the Russian Prince Alexis Orloff. He owned an album consisting of 96 sheets by Giambattista Tiepolo and his workshop, which were put up for auction in 1920 at a memorable auction in Paris. When the drawings thus became known to a wider public, people were amazed not so much by their number as by their consistently exquisite quality. The collection was assembled by an evidently accomplished connoisseur, yet its exact provenance remains a mystery to this day. According to George Knox, the album was created in the late 18th or early 19th century and likely belonged to Alexis’s ancestor, Grigori Vladimirovich Orloff, who spent most of his life in Europe (see Knox 1961, p. 269). Many of the sheets from the Orloff album are now in museum collections. Among them are the only two other heads from the collection: that of a bearded Oriental in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (Inv. C 1991/GL U11) and that of a soldier in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (Inv. 1894-4), which are also executed in black and white chalk on blue paper. Our head is thus the last one from the album still in private hands. Knox assumes that it was created during Tiepolo’s years in Würzburg. The work served as a model for a lost painting that formerly belonged to the Trotti Collection in Paris and depicts a scholar with a magnifying glass (Knox 1980, X.46). A preparatory drawing of the hand with the magnifying glass is included in the Beurdeley Album at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (Knox 1980, A.76). Although the painting does not correspond to any of the heads that Tiepolo’s son Giandomenico included in the print series *Raccolta di Teste*, its dimensions and style nevertheless match those of many of the source works in the series. Provenance: Possibly the collection of Grigori Vladimirovich Orloff (1777–1826), St. Petersburg/Paris. Collection of Alexei Nikolaievich (Alexis) Orloff (1867–1916), Paris. Sold at his auction at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, *Dessins par G.-B. Tiepolo, Composant la Collection de Son Excellence feu le Prince Alexis Orloff*, on April 30, 1920, Lot 119 (with illustration). Acquired by “[Alexandre?] Doucet” (according to the annotated auction catalog). Edmond Lévy-Ditisheim (1896–1988), Basel. Passed down through inheritance to a private collection in Germany. Lit.: George Knox: “The Orloff Album of Tiepolo Drawings,” in: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. CIII, No. 699, June 1961, p. 275, no. 91. George Knox: Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo. A Study and Catalogue Raisonné of the Chalk Drawings, Oxford 1980, p. 238, no. M.219. - Please request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is listed in the catalog only in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.