Neptune
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian, 1696 - 1770
18th century
Black chalk on faded blue paper
Sight: 9 3/8 × 3 1/4 in. (23.8 × 8.3 cm)
Mount: 14 15/16 × 8 15/16 in. (37.9 × 22.7 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Bequest of Wallace D. Bradway, Class of 1947
2022.19.52
Geography
Place Made: Italy, Europe
Period
1600-1800
Object Name
Drawing
Research Area
Drawing
On view
Label
Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, stands powerfully with a flowing beard among lightly sketched shells. Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo created paintings and frescoes, often involving mythological and religious subjects. He used blue paper for his sketches first. This practice illustrates the longevity of blue paper as an artistic medium in northern Italy, where it first appeared around 300 years before Tiepolo’s life. Many examples of blue paper from this period have discolored significantly to beige or gray, contributing to the difficulty of studying blue paper in the modern era. Scholarship about blue paper has developed relatively recently, partially due to advances in modern technology that allow scholars to test pigments used in faded works.
From the 2025 exhibition Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400–1800, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art
Label written by Isabelle (Izzy) Lust '25, Class of 1954 Intern
Course History
Engineering Sciences 24.01, Science of Materials, Alex Boys and Ursula Gibson, Winter 2025
Italian 1.02, Introductory Italian I, Noemi Perego, Fall 2025
Italian 1.03, Introductory Italian I, Noemi Perego, Fall 2025
Italian 1.01, Introductory Italian I, Giorgio Alberti, Fall 2025
Italian 3.02, Introductory Italian III, Giorgio Alberti, Fall 2025
Italian 3.01, Introductory Italian III, Marco D'Angelo, Fall 2025
Music 99.01, Senior Proseminar: Loving Music Slowly, Richard Beaudoin, Fall 2025
Exhibition History
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400–1800, Harrington Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 6, 2025 - November 14, 2026.
Provenance
Christie's, Rome, 19 November 1990, lot 272; Sotheby's, "Old Master Drawings, Watercolors," New York, 12 January 1994, lot 146; sold to Wallace D. Bradway, New Haven, Connecticut, 1994; given to present collection, 2022.
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