Currently not on view
Ruggero Mounted on a Hippogriff,
ca. 1757
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1696–1770; born Venice, Italy; died Madrid, Spain
x1948-843
In this vibrant study, Tiepolo explored an ebullient airborne group—an armed warrior riding a winged beast—viewed in foreshortening from below. The scene, from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516), depicts the hero Ruggero flying on a hippogriff, a cross between a horse and a griffin, to rescue the beautiful heroine Angelica, chained to rocks by a sea-monster. The group appears in one of the frescoes in the Villa Valmarana, near Vicenza, where Tiepolo and his son Domenico worked in 1757. A masterpiece of spontaneous creativity and pictorial intelligence, this drawing eloquently recalls Vincenzo da Canal’s characterization of Tiepolo’s art as “tutto spirito e foco” (all spirit and fire).
Information
Title
Ruggero Mounted on a Hippogriff
Dates
ca. 1757
Medium
Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash over black chalk, on laid paper
Dimensions
13.5 × 17.7 cm (5 5/16 × 6 15/16 in.)
frame: 32.4 × 40 × 2.9 cm (12 3/4 × 15 3/4 × 1 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895
Object Number
x1948-843
Reference Numbers
Gibbons 603
Culture
Materials
Count Bernardino Algarotti-Corniani ?; Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire?; E. Parsons & Sons, London, 1926; Dan Fellows Platt, stamp (L. 750a) verso, on mount, lower left, in black.;
From Knox, “Tiepolo...”: dates this 1757. (See reference Bib. 4579);- George Knox, "Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo at Princeton", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 23, no. 1 (1964): p. 2-28., p. 28, no. 86; p. 21 (illus.)
- Jacob Bean, Italian drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University; 106 selected examples, (New York: October House, 1966)., no. 45
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George Knox, Tiepolo: a bicentenary exhibition, 1770-1970: drawings, mainly from American collections, by Giambattista Tiepolo and the members of his circle, (Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1970).
, no. 8 (illus.) - Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)., Vol. 1: p. 139, no. 448 (illustrated in Vol. 2 under the same catalog number)
- Bernard Aikema, Tiepolo and his circle: drawings in American collections, (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1996)., p. 44, cat. no. 10; p. 45 (illus.)
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Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Painterly enlightenment: the art of Franz Anton Maulbertsch, 1724-1796, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
, fig. 48; p. 119–120 - Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 243, app. no. 50 (illus.)
