Tiepolo and Punchinello: Venice, Magic and Commedia Dell'arte

NOTES

• The group of etchings known as Capricci comprise ten prints of nearly uniform size (ca. 14 × 17.5 cm.). The Scherzi di fantasia include 23 prints ranging in size from 23.2 × 18.2 cm. to 14 × 188.8 cm. Questions about the commissioning of these prints abound; there are no records to indicate whether they were commissioned at all.
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• Documents, however, do suggest the approximate period in which Tiepolo worked on the prints. Maria Santifaller has conclusively demonstrated that the Capricci were finished and included in an album of prints in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett bearing the date 1743. (Santifaller, Maria, ‘Carl Heinrich von Heineken e le acqueforti di Giovanni Battista Tiepolo a Dresda,’ Arte Veneta, XXVI [1972]: 146.) The only fixed point of reference for the Scherzi is 1757, when Tiepolo's patron, the great collector and bookman Anton Maria Zanetti sent a set of 20 prints to the famous French collector P.-J. Mariette. Included in this set were the Scherzi series (op. cit., p. 151.). This fact, however, does not establish the precedence of the Capricci, since it is still conceivable that Tiepolo worked on the Scherzi before 1743. The prevailing scholarly sentiment is that Tiepolo worked on the Capricci in the years immediately before 1743, and that the Scherzi were done in intervals from 1740 to 1757. This thesis would explain the variations in technique within the Scherzi prints, as Tiepolo's experimentation with etching developed throughout his career. Such a time-frame would also clarify the occasional similarities of motifs found between the Capricci and Scherzi; perhaps specific prints that became part of the second series were made at the time Tiepolo was preparing the Capricci, while others appeared at various later intervals.
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• In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Kassel 1952, vol. 2, col. 808.
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• Quoted in Enciclopedia italiana, vol. VIII, p. 909.
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• For a discussion of the scherzo form in music, see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London 1980, vol. 16, p. 634.
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• See Gerald Kahan, Jacques Callot: Artist of the Theatre, Athens, Georgia, 1976.
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• Richard W. Wallace, The Etchings of Salvator Rosa, Princeton, 1969, p. 19.
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• Tiepolo was certainly acquainted with Rosa's prints as early as the 1720s, when he would have seen them in Marco Ricci's collection. Upon Tiepolo's death, moreover, his son Domenico recorded that his father owned several Rosa prints. See Michael Levey, Giambattista Tiepolo: His Life and Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 99.
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• M.P. Merriman, The Etchings of Giambattista Tiepolo, M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1963, p.34.
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• For discussion of Castiglione's influence on Tiepolo, see Maria Santifaller, ‘Zur Graphik Giambattista Tiepolos,’ Pantheon 43 (1975): 327–34; and Ann Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Master Draughtsman of the Baroque, Philadelphia 1971.
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• On Algarotti and Tiepolo, see F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters, New Haven 1980, pp. 351–355; and H. Posse, ‘Die Briefe des F. Algarotti an den sachsischen Hof,’ Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlung, 1931 (Beiheft).
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• For discussion of Hermetic concepts, see Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Chicago 1964; Grete de Francesco, The Power of the Charlatan, New Haven 1939, pp. 33–34; W. Shumaker, The occult sciences in the Renaissance, Berkeley 1972; and K.H. Dannenfeldt, ‘The Pseudo-Zoroastrian Oracles in the Renaissance,’ Studies in the Renaissance 4 (1957): 7–30.
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• See, for example, L. R. Metcalfe, ‘The etchings of G.B. Tiepolo,’ Print Connoisseur 1 (1920-21): 344–379.
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• P. Molmenti, Tiepolo: la vie at l-oeuvre du peintre, Paris 1911, p. 32.
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• F. Haskell, op.cit., p. 354.
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• A. Morassi, ‘Tiepolo, Giambattista,’ in Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. XIV, col. 89.
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• For a discussion of arguments for and against this thesis, see P.L. Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, New York 1966, p. 208–230.
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• It is interesting to note that Salvator Rosa often joined these groups, acting the part of Corviello, a buffoon peripherally related to Punchinello. See K.M. Lea, Italian Popular Comedy, New York 1962, vol. 1, p. 213.
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• Benedetto Croce was the first scholar to maintain that the establishment of the character in the theatre began in 1620 with the Neapolitan actor, Silvio Fiorillo. See his ‘Pulcinella e la relazioni della commedia dell'arte con la commedia popolare romana,’ first published in 1898, reprinted in Saggi sulla letteratura italiana nell seicento,. 3d ed. Bari, 1948, pp. 187–250.
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• Marcia Vetrocq, Domenico Tiepolo's Punchinello drawings, Bloomington, Indiana 1979, p. 28.
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• See Jaroslav Pokorny, Goldoni und das venezianische Theater, Berlin 1968; and M. Bonicatti, ‘Il problema dei rapporti fra Domenico e Gianbattista Tiepolo,’ in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di studi sul Tiepolo, Milan 1971, p. 28.
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• Vetrocq, op. cit., p. 25.
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• In Diderot's letters to Sophie Volland, London 1972, p. 119; quoted in Vetrocq, op., cit., p. 24.
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• Bonicatti, ‘Precedenti di Francesco Guardi nella tradizione settecentesca del ‘capriccio’,’ in Problemi guardeschi, Venice 1966.
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• See B. Lanata and D. Sartori, Maschere, Milan 1984, pp. 26–27.
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• M. Kozloff, “Caricatures of G.B. Tiepolo,” Marsyas 10 (1960–61): 16.
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• De Francesco, op. cit., p. 4; see also Enciclopedia della Spettacolo, Rome 1954, vol. III, pp. 729–730.
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• De Francesco, op. cit., p. 12.
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• Quoted in Diane Russell, Rare etchings by Giambattista and Gian Domenico Tiepolo, Washington, D.C., 1972, p. 26.
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• De Francesco discusses Mencken and Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit in fascinating detail. See De Francesco, op. cit. For Maffei, see Roberta Turchi, La commedia italiana del settecento, Florence 1985; and Enciclopedia italiana, vol. XXI, p. 862.
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• De Francesco, op. cit., p. 222.
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• op. cit., p. 5.
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• op. cit., p. 23.
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• op. cit., p. 25.
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• op. cit., pp. 25–26.
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• See John H. McDowell,‘Some pictorial aspects of early mountebank stages,’ in Publications of the Modern Language Association (March 1946): 84–96.
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• See R. Tessari, ‘Nell'antimondo dei ciarlatani e dei buffoni,’ in Commedia dell'Arte: La maschera d l'ombra, Milan 1981, pp. 31–47.
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• De Francesco, op. cit., p. 114.
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• op. cit., pp. 131–132.
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• On Goya's appreciation of Tiepolo, see Michelangelo Muraro, ‘Tiepolo e Goya,’ in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di studi sul Tiepolo, Udine, 1970, pp. 68–80.
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