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| A Dance in the Country |
Artist:Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, Venice 1727–1804 Venice)
Date:ca. 1755
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:29 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. (75.6 x 120 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1980
Although Giandomenico Tiepolo assisted his father in numerous decorative enterprises, his own talent lay in the depiction of contemporary life. The picture is one of Giandomenico's most evocative and appealing works. It shows an actress dancing with a young man wearing the traditional costume of the commedia dell'arte character Mezzetino.
Catalogue Entry
A traveling troupe of commedia dell'arte actors entertains a party of Venetians enjoying a summer holiday on the mainland. Such performances often ended with a minuet, depicted here. The dancing couple may be the lovers Lelio and Isabella (sometimes called by other names), the only actors in the troupe who did not wear masks. Recognizable in the crowd of onlookers are other Commedia dell’arte characters: Columbine, the masked woman behind the dancers; Pulcinella, the man in white at center with a crooked nose and tall hat (a second Pulcinella is visible behind him); the Doctor, the sinister figure in a black robe and floppy hat; Coviello, the bass player at the right with feathers sprouting from his hat; Harlequin, the acrobat climbing the ladder leaning against one of the trees; and, possibly, Pasquariello, the masked man wearing a ruff and a close-fitting cap talking to the woman seated on the right.
Domenico also treated the dance theme in a fresco in the Foresteria of the Villa Valmarana, near Vicenza, and in three oil paintings: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona; Musée du Louvre, Paris; and sold, Christie's, London, December 6, 2007, no. 41. The Barcelona and Paris paintings have pendants showing a quack doctor advertising his wares in a Venetian square. The third work was formerly paired with a picture of dancing dogs (private collection). No record exists of a pendant for the MMA painting.
The Barcelona, Paris, and Valmarana paintings were executed before Domenico left Venice for Madrid in 1762. Domenico painted the third pair of canvases in Madrid during the 1760s. There is no firm evidence for dating the MMA painting, but it is related stylistically to the artist’s two Stories of Abraham in the Carandini collection, Rome, and the Encampment of Gypsies in the Landesmuseum in Mainz, which Domenico painted at Würzburg, sometime before he returned to Venice in 1753. The early dating of the MMA picture is supported by its German provenance, although there is a tradition within the Merck family of Darmstadt who formerly owned the work that it was acquired by Johann Heinrich Merck (1741–1791) in Italy (Albrecht 1963).
A related drawing by Domenico Tiepolo in the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London, shows a richly appointed Venetian interior with a couple dancing before a crowd of elegant people wearing three-cornered hats. On the verso is a black-chalk drawing of a carriage, very much like the one in the MMA painting. Because of the dancing woman’s coiffure, the sheet has been dated before 1760 (see James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, pp. 47, 86, no. 62).
[2011; adapted from Fahy 2005]
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