Eighteenth Century Italian Drawings From The Robert Lehman Collection 1981
by Metropolitan Museum of Art /
1981 / English / PDF
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This exhibition of eighteenth-century Italian drawings is the most extensive in the series intended to show all the drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection. Robert Lehman was especially interested in the works of the Venetian artists. He began collecting Venetian drawings in the 1920s and continued it steadily through forty years. Thus, his acquisition of the Paul Wallraf collection in the 1960s only rounded out a splendid assembly. The drawings of the Guardis, Canaletto, and the two Tiepolos constitute the main body of the exhibition. These artists’ development and techniques can be studied almost fully from the sheets seen here. The subjects include landscapes and vedute, religious and everyday scenes, and caricatures. The famous series of the Tiepolos, such as the lives of Christ and of the Virgin, the story of St. Anthony, and the designs for the frescoes in the family villa in Zianigo, are all represented here with outstanding examples. Nine drawings from Giovanni Domenico’s famous Punchinello series, Divertimento per li regazzi, also are included, as are some other sheets that are related to this lighthearted but very touching satire of Venetian life at the end of the eighteenth century.
