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Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned woman wears a black tricorn hat and a black cloak that covers her shoulders, chest, and much of her face in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks at us from the corners of her dark, almond-shaped eyes. The jet-black hat is set back slightly on her head but covers most of her forehead. A loop goes around a black button on the side to our right, and the corner of a parchment-white decoration, presumably a bow, peeks up from the far side of the hat. Her pale face is like a moon, partially visible within the opening of the cloak that goes from her temples, down her cheeks, and covers her chin to just under her lower lip. The garment is gathered over her chin, and drapes down her chest. The fabric is painted black with green undertones. A glimpse of brown hair peeks out over her left temple, to our right. Her right, gloved hand, on our left, emerges from beneath the fabric to hold a closed fan by her chin. The glove is gossamer white. The sides of the fan's sticks are coral orange, and the fan is streaked with forest green and more orange against cream white across the top, where the fabric is accordioned. The space behind her is dark, pine green, a shade lighter than the woman’s dress.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Young Lady in a Tricorn Hat, c. 1755/1760

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 32

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 62.2 x 49.3 cm (24 1/2 x 19 7/16 in.)

framed: 80 x 68 x 7.6 cm (31 1/2 x 26 3/4 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.77

Artists / Makers

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (artist) Venetian, 1696 - 1770

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Luigi Pisa, Florence, by 1937;[1] (his sale, Circolo Artistico, Palazzetto del Da Ponte, Venice, 5-9 September 1938, no. 318, repro. as by Alessandro Longhi). Italico Brass, Venice.[2] (Schaeffer Galleries, New York), probably from 1947; sold 21 May 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] Catalogue de la Collection Pisa, preface by Ugo Ojetti, 2 vols., Milan, 1937: 1:114, no. 749, 2:124. A handwritten notation on the back of an old photograph (photographic archives, NGA), reads "Pisani Collection 1932." This information has not been independently corroborated.

[2] According to Alessandro Morandotti, Mostra di pittura veneziana del settecento, Exh. cat. Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, Venice, 1941: 43 (listed as Alessandro Brass); Max Goering, "Tiepolo" in Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1907-1950: 33:154; and Antonio Morassi, Tiepolo, Bergamo, 1943: 28.

[3] Inventory card no. 1220 from the Schaeffer Galleries, Inc., confirms the sale of the picture in May of 1948; the ealiest date on the card is 11/28/1947. (Getty Research Institute, copy NGA curatorial files). The purchase from Schaeffer Galleries is also recorded in a typewritten notation, Kress records, NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2492.

Associated Names

Brass, Italico
Circolo Artistico
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Pisa, Luigi
Schaeffer Galleries, Inc.

Exhibition History

1939: Exhibition of Venetian Paintings and Drawings Held in Aid of Lord Baldwin's Fund for Refugees, Matthiesen, Ltd., London, 1939, no. 60.

1941: Mostra di pittura veneziana del settecento, Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, Rome, 1941, no. 38, repro.

1982: Le portrait en Italie au Siècle de Tiepolo, Petit Palais, Paris, 1982, no. 47, repro. (cat. by Marco Chiarini).

1994: The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museo del Settecento Veneziano - Ca'Rezzonico, Venice, 1994-1995, not in cat. (shown only in Washington in 1995).

1996: Giambattista Tiepolo: 1696 - 1996, Museo del Settecento Veneziano - Ca'Rezzonico, Venice; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996-1997, no. 45b, repro.

1998: Giambattista Tiepolo 1696-1770, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, 1998-1999: no. 71, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a plain-weave fabric; the weave is very coarse, open, and unusually uneven. The ground is basically red under the dark tones and gray under the lighter tones, except for red under the white-gloved hand. The paint was applied in a rich consistency with strong evidence of the brushstrokes and a general concern with the texture of paint. The application was both wet-over-dry and wet-into-wet in the top layers, especially in the face. Additional texture was produced by using the butt end of the brush to scratch into the wet paint. This was done exclusively to emphasize the folds in the black cloak and does not appear elsewhere. These "incised lines" create an impasto and reveal the red ground; they are visible to the naked eye, but are much more dramatically evident in x-radiographs.

X-radiographs also reveal several artist's changes. The fan was originally open. Changes in the contours of the open fan suggest that it was thoroughly worked up before being changed. The position of the fingers was altered to accommodate the change in the way that the hand held the closed as opposed to the open fan. Originally a mask sat on the right side of the hat, not the left, and was painted out when the fan was changed. In x-radiographs the figure's right eye appears in deeper shadow than it does on the surface. The figure may have been looking into the open fan, whereas she now looks outward.

The tacking margins, originally unpainted, have been opened and incorporated into the painted surface. The original dimensions were about 5 cm smaller in each direction. The open weave of the fabric may have caused the pitting in the paint surface, an effect perhaps accentuated by excessive pressure during a lining. There are minor losses and abrasion scattered throughout. The varnish is thick and somewhat discolored. The painting was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored by Stephen Pichetto in 1948.

Bibliography

1907: Goering, Max. In Thieme, Ulrich, and Felix Becke, eds. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 33(1939):154.

1939: Borenius, Tancred. "An Exhibition of Venetian Painting." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 74 (1939): 193.

1939: Goering, Max. "Ein neuentdecktes Mädchenbildnis von Giovanni Battista Tiepolo." Pantheon 24 (1939): 226-227, repro. 225.

1943: Morassi, Antonio. Tiepolo. Bergamo, 1943: 28, repro. 73.

1947: Arslan, Edoardo. "Dipinti di Jacopo Amigoni." Belle Arti 1 (1947): 185, fig. 4, as by Jacopo Amigoni.

1951: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 160, no. 70, repro., as A Young Venetian Lady in Domino and Tricorne (Bautta).

1958: Morassi, Antonio. "Giambattista Tiepolo's 'Girl with a Lute' and the Clarification of Some Points in the Work of Domenico Tiepolo." The Art Quarterly 21 (1958): 180, 185, fig. 7, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 250, repro., as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne.

1960: Pallucchini 1960, 93, fig. 233.

1962: Morassi, Antonio. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G. B. Tiepolo. London, 1962: 67, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1964: Levi Pisetzky, Rosita. Storia del Costume in Italia. 5 vols. Milan, 1964-1969: 4:326, pl. 186, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 127, as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 113, repro., as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne.

1968: Pallucchini, Anna. L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo. Milan, 1968: 127, no. 252, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 198, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1973: Fahy, Everett, and Francis John Bagott Watson. The Wrightsman Collection. Vol. 5: Paintings, drawings, sculpture. New York, 1973: 275-276, repro. 274, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 154-155, fig. 294, as by Giandomenico Tiepolo.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 338, repro., as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:440-441; 2:pl. 319, 319A, as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne, by Domenico Tiepolo.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 389, repro., as A Young Lady in Domino and Tricorne.

1989: Pignatti, Terisio. Venezia. Mille anni d'arte. Venice, 1989: 309.

1992: Barcham, William. Tiepolo. New York, 1992: 118, no. 37, color repro.

1993: Gemin, Massimo, and Filippo Pedrocco. Giambattista Tiepolo. Venice, 1993: 190, color repro., 479, no. 505, repro.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 289-293, color repro. 291.

2012: Percival, Melissa. Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination. Burlington, Vt., 2012: 66.