The Punchinello Riding a Camel at the Head of a Caravan

late 1790s

Medium

Brush and brown ink over black chalk, on laid paper

Dimensions

29.9 × 41 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-196148

The eldest surviving son of the celebrated 18th-century Venetian painter, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), Giovanni Domenico (Giandomenico) Tiepolo achieved fame in his own right with a series of 104 large drawings that illustrate the colorful life and death of Punchinello, a character from the popular Commedia dell’Arte. From an album entitled Divertimenti per li Ragazzi (Entertainments for Children), these drawings depict Punchinello and his attendants’ inclination towards childish behavior, which makes them at once vulnerable and ridiculous. No known literary text forms the basis for these drawings. The stories were most likely handed down orally, in accordance with the tradition of popular theater, in which actors extemporized and embroidered at will. In all of the depictions, Punchinello, a sly, lazy antihero, wears a white costume, a ruff about his neck, a conical hat, and a black mask with a beaked nose. The drawing portrays at its center the vain-glorious Punchinello seated atop a dromedary with one arm akimbo and the other holding a decorative staff. As he proudly leads a caravan of camels across an arid landscape, Punchinello scouts ahead to a pyramid-like structur…