(Venice 1736–1776 Madrid)
Portrait of a lady with a mask,
pastel on paper, 64 x 51.7 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 16 May 1996, lot 75 (as Lorenzo Tiepolo);
Enrico Frascione collection;
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Venice, Villa Ceresa, Lorenzo Tiepolo e il suo tempo, 26 October 1997 – 31 January 1998;
Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Sérénissime! Venise en fête de Tiepolo à Guardi, 25 February – 25 June 2017;
Gualdo Tadino, Church of St. Francis, Seduzione e potere. La donna nell’arte tra Guido Cagnacci e Tiepolo, 30 July – 3 December 2017

Literature:
F. Pedrocco, in: G. Romanelli/F. Pedrocco (eds.), Lorenzo Tiepolo e il suo tempo, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1997, pp. 86-87 (as Lorenzo Tiepolo);
R.-M. Herda-Mousseaux/B. Couilleaux (eds.), Sérénissime, Venice en Fête de Tiepolo à Guardi, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2017, p. 148, fig. 41 (as Lorenzo Tiepolo);
V. Sgarbi (ed.), Seduzione e potere. La donna nell’arte tra Guido Cagnacci e Tiepolo, Gubbio 2017, p. 162 (as Lorenzo Tiepolo)

This portrait of a woman with a mask, executed with coloured pastel on paper, was included in the first exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s youngest son Lorenzo, held in Mestre in 1997. This work has been compared to the Portrait of Cecilia Guardi Tiepolo conserved at Ca’Rezzonico, Venice (see op. cit. Pedrocco, 1997, pp. 80-81).

The subject has previously been identified as Santa Rosa da Lima possibly because of the presence of the roses. The work has a strong Spanish influence, firstly identifiable from the type of mask worn by the woman, which does not resemble the larva and bautta used in Venice, typically completed with a tricorne hat, nor the simpler round moretta that was held in place with ties. Indeed, Lorenzo Tiepolo spent the final fourteen years of his life in Spain where in 1762 his father Giovanni Battista had taken all his family, having been called to work for the Court of Carlo III Bourbon. Somewhat overshadowed by his father, Lorenzo fortuitously managed to attain a certain autonomy as an etcher and above all as a pastel portraitist, a technique he almost certainly learnt from the great Venetian specialist, Rosalba Carriera, from whom he may have acquired that ‘delicate and detailed manner’ [‘fattura delicate e minuziosa’] with which he continued to work even after the death of his father in 1770 (see op. cit. Pedrocco, 1997, p. 33).

Despite a scarcity of information, we know that in addition to helping his father and his elder brother on the vast fresco paintings for the Royal Palace, by 1763 Lorenzo had already made pastel portraits of the Infanti of Spain and the Princes of Asturie which can be identified in the six pastel portraits now in the Prado, Madrid (see op. cit. Pedrocco, 1997, p. 40, no. 2 with further references; and M. B. Mena Marqués, Dibujos italianos del siglo XVIII, Madrid 1990, pp. 147-150). The twelve pastels of Tipos populares from the Royal Palace in Madrid were added to these subsequently, having formerly been attributed to Giandomenico Tiepolo they were assigned to Lorenzo by August Mayer in 1925 (A. L. Mayer, Dipinti di Lorenzo Tiepolo, in: Bollettino d’Arte, 18.1924/25, pp. 413-422).

It is possible that Francisco Goya was influenced by Lorenzo’s pastel portraits and tipos between 1776 and 1777 while he was preparing the designs for the tapestry cycle for the Princes of Asturie, including the celebrated Parasol (see M. Favilla, R. Rugolo, A portrait of a baby girl by Lorenzo Tiepolo, in: The Burlington Magazine, March 2014, pp. 164-168, in part. p. 167).