Giambattista Tiepolo: “Triumph of the Arts and Sciences”, ca. 1730–31. Oil on canvas 21 7/8 × 28 3/8 inches Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Photo: © Direção-Geral do Património Cultural / Arquivo de Documentação Fotográfica (DGPC/ADF) / photo Luisa Oliveira.
Tiepolo’s lost frescoes at Frick Collection ‘Tiepolo in Milan: The Lost Frescoes of Palazzo Archinto’: The Frick Collection reunites a series of preparatory paintings and drawings related to Giambattista Tiepolo’s series of ceiling frescoes for Palazzo Archinto in Milan, executed between 1730 and 1731. April 16 through July 14, 2019.]]>
Source: Frick Collection
The paintings were commissioned by Count Carlo Archinto (1670–1732), whose family distinguished itself in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under both the Spanish and imperial rulers of Milan. Tragically, the Palazzo was bombed during World War II, and its interior was completely destroyed. The only record of the finished frescoes in situ is a series of black and white photographs taken between 1897 and the late 1930s.
The exhibition present approximately fifty objects from collections in the United States and Europe to tell the story of this important commission. It features five surviving preparatory paintings and drawings by the artist, among them the Frick’s oil sketch Perseus and Andromeda. As the Frick does not loan works that were purchased by the institution’s founder, the New York City museum is the only place where these paintings and drawings can be seen together. Other complementary drawings and prints by Tiepolo are on view, as well as several books of illustrations by the artist that were commissioned by Filippo Argelati, the Archinto family librarian and a noted intellectual of the day.
Of the preparatory works that survive from the Archinto commission, three painted sketches on canvas provide the most important evidence about the lost frescoes: “Triumph of Arts and Sciences” (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), “Apollo and Phaëton (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and the Frick’s “Perseus and Andromeda”. These works are joined by the only known drawings by Tiepolo related to the frescoes in Milan: one from the Civico Museo Sartorio in Trieste, and the second from the Finnish National Gallery, Sinebrychoff Art Museum in Helsinki. Additionally, the show features two Tiepolo oil sketches—from the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna and The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, England— that represent the myth of Phaëton and have been connected by scholars to the Archinto cycle.
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