(Venice 1727–1804)
The Holy Family,
oil on canvas, 45 x 38 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Modena;
European Private collection

Literature:
E. Martini, Pittura veneta e altra italiana, Rimini 1992, p. 472. ill. fig. 345

We are grateful to Professor Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution after examining the painting in the original.

The present picture, which has not been listed in Adriano Mariuz’s standard monograph on Domenico Tiepolo, is nonetheless a typical work of this artist. Giambattista Tiepolo’s second son Domenico was an artist of great talent and originality. He excelled both as a draughtsman and printmaker and as a painter who practiced a variety of subjects, religious and profane, in fresco and on canvas. The canvas here under discussion is a typical example of Domenico’s mature style. It shows the Madonna and Child with Saint Joseph in the background.

The present composition refers to examples by Domenico’s father Giambattista, but the subtle, “milky” chromatism and the facial types are typical for the younger Tiepolo. Domenico painted various other half-length images of the Madonna and Child, all of them datable to the 1770s (a good example is in the Museo Civico in Bassano del Grappa). Given the similarities both in typological and stylistic terms with these pictures, the present work has been dated to the eighth decade of the eighteenth century by Aikema.

Giandomenico who had entered his father Giambattista’s studio in the early 1740s, learnt his art by copying his father’s drawings however his work tended to avoid the grandiloquence conspicuous in Giambattista´s compostions. Instead Giandomico created tender scenes, such as the present compositon, with a sense of intimacy. From 1750 to 1770 Giandomenico was both his father’s assistant and associate as well as an independent artist, although at times their roles merged.