Getty Museum
A Centaur and a Female Faun in a Landscape
Creator
Giovanni Domenico TiepoloItalian Artist · 1727–1804
All works by this person →Although very successful as a painter and engraver, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo made some of his most provocative works as drawings. He trained in the studio of his famous father, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and was independently producing works for his own commissions by the age of twenty. He continued to work with his father while at times executing his own designs, until his father's death in 1770
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1775
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In this barren landscape a centaur and a female faun lie enraptured in each other's arms. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo borrowed from mythology to invent this erotic image, which is part of a series of drawings he made of centaurs, fauns, and satyrs. To the Greeks and Romans, these imaginary creatures represented lust. Tiepolo also modeled them after a legend about Hercules, who killed a centaur for attempting to seduce his wife. A quiver of arrows, a bow, and a club-weapons identified with Hercules-lie near the centaur. The centaur's head is thrown back, and he reclines as if dead, but the faun's joyful expression conveys otherwise. Although the original tale is about seduction and attempted rape, Tiepolo suggests here that the lovemaking is consensual. Tiepolo's loose drawing style seems appropriate for this fantasy world. Fluid ink washes define the landscape and almost envelop the creatures, while sketchy pen lines exaggerate the rocky terrain and the characters' subtle gestures.
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