27. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
(1727-1804)
Self Portrait

(click on image to print)
Tiepolo, Self Portrait

Self Portrait

Etching, 1774, from Raccolta di Teste, Libro Secondo, De Vesme 148, Rizzi 192 i/ii, 117 x 93 mm. A fine impression of this exceedingly rare self portrait, in the first state, before the number 30 appears in the top left corner, on laid paper trimmed just inside the plate mark but outside the borderline of the image. Oddly, the work is based (as is the portrait of Battista Tiepolo, which appears in the first book of the Teste) on an oil portrait by Franz Joseph Degle (1724-1812), dated 1773. The first edition of the two sets of the Teste, dedicated to Cavalier Alvise Tiepolo, ambassador to Pope Clement XIV, was shortly before the Pope’s death on September 22, 1774, so it must have appeared some time between 1773 and that date in 1774. The first state of the portrait, before the number, would presumably date from before the edition. The Teste, basically studies of the heads of old men, were sixty in number, divided into two books, the first headed by the portrait of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the second by that of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. The former, though rare, occasionally appears for sale. The latter, for some reason extremely rare, has apparently not appeared at auction, prior to this impression, in the last thirty years.