The Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, with its approximately 2 million reproductions (see photo) after works of art that are often accompanied by provenance information, is an invaluable research for provenance researchers. I went to the Witt Library while conducting provenan...
The majority of Giambattista Tiepolo’s Punchinello drawings, on which I wrote my dissertation, depict Punchinelli celebrating venerdì gnoccolare, the carnival bacchanalia that takes place in Verona on the Friday before Ash Wednesday (see image). The festivities and rituals of venerdì gnoccolar...
The following case study describes the process I undertook to identify with certainty the full name—whose surname and only first initial were provided—of a collector listed in a provenance. Two of Giambattista Tiepolo’s Punchinello drawings (one currently in the Morgan Library, pictured here, ...
Over the course of approximately thirty years, from the late 1720s through the early 1760s, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo, the preeminent Venetian fresco painter of his day and an extremely prolific draftsman, executed at least thirty-six drawings of Punchinello, the long-nosed, tall-hatt...