An early (?) copy after Tiepolo’s second plate in the series “Flight into Egypt"

Unidentified artist after Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727–180)

Copy after GD Tiepolo’s etching, “Plate 2: The Flight into Egypt”. The date of this impression is unknown, but as the print is on laid paper this suggests the nineteenth century.

Etching on chine-collé (?) on laid paper with significant plate tone and narrow margins.

Size: (sheet) 19.6 x 24 cm; (plate) 18.7 x 23.2 cm

GD Tiepolo’s complete series of prints are illustrated and discussed in Colta Feller Ives’s (1972) “Picturesque Ideas on the Flight into Egypt etched by Gi ovanni Domenico Tiepolo”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

See also DeVesme 1906, 19 (De Vesme, Alexandre, “Le peintre-graveur italien”, Milan, 1906)

Condition: a richly inked impression with narrow margins in excellent condition.

I am selling this amateurish and possibly early copy of Tiepolo’s wonderful etching for AU$139 in total (currently US$106.38/EUR94.77/GBP82.04 at the time of posting this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. If you are interested in purchasing this visually arresting etching, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This amateurish copy of GD Tiepolo’s famous etching needs to be compared to the original to see the awkwardness of the drawing. I should say that the drawing skills exhibited in this copy are truly dreadful—and I guess that I have—but, as I am trying to sell the print, I need to point out one of the more interesting features: how the artist has understood the trumpet blowing action of the advancing airborne figure. Here the copyist has substituted the finely contoured strokes used by Tiepolo to render this trumpet blower’s puffed-out cheeks with the implied meaning of an inscribed circle. This is a clever idea.

Regarding this image, Ives (1972) in her compendium of Tiepolo’s etchings for the series, offers the following insights:

“With fanfare, the allegorical figure Fame escorts a symbolic representation of Prince-Bishop Carl Philipp von Grieffenklau. Two putti carry the bishop's miter and stole, while an angel bears the Grieffenklau coat of arms above the fortress of Marienberg, the palace of Würzburg prince-bishops from 1250 until 1750, when the new Residenz was completed and decorated by the Tiepolos.”