Art Institute of Chicago

Punchinello Collapses on the Road, from the series Divertimento per li regazzi (Entertainment for Children)

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Date

c. 1791

Medium

Pen and brown ink and brush and brown washes, over traces of charcoal, on off-white laid paper, with framing lines in pen and brown ink

Culture

Italy

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Between 1797 and his death in 1804, Domenico Tiepolo created 104 inventive wash drawings for what he called Divertimenti per li ragazzi (diversions for children). This series described the life, from birth to death, of the tragicomic commedia dell’arte figure Punchinello (identified by his conical hat and beaked mask), in a loosely structured tale of an everyman. In Punchinello Collapses on the Road, we see the protagonist, surrounded by eleven of his companions and three lamenting women, in the final days before his death. While Punchinello is indeed a kind of everyman, Tiepolo also made references throughout the series to the life of Christ. This drawing calls to mind one of Christ’s falls as he carried the cross.

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