Full title | Two Men in Oriental Costume |
---|---|
Artist | Giovanni Battista Tiepolo |
Artist dates | 1696 - 1770 |
Series | Four Decorative Scenes |
Date made | about 1740-6 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 159.1 x 53.3 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1960 |
Inventory number | NG6302 |
Location | Room 39 |
Art route(s) | C |
Collection | Main Collection |
Two men stand huddled together. They wear stunning robes and headdresses made of sumptuous fabrics, both ‘oriental’ in style (from the Eastern Mediterranean). Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s lively outlines and visible brushstrokes emphasise the flamboyant sleeves and folds of their clothing. Hints of primary colours appear against more sombre tones, while the brilliant sunlight and subtle shade pick out the men’s expressive faces and textured beards. Tiepolo was immensely skilled at drawing faces, which is particularly noticeable here in the weathered complexion of the aged man closest to us.
This is one of four paintings that once decorated a room in the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. The figures are inspired by Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a popular sixteenth-century poem that tells of the ill-fated love between a Christian knight (Rinaldo) and a Saracen sorceress (Armida). The characterful old man with a fluffy white beard is probably the magician of Ascalon who, after showing Rinaldo heroic images of warfare in a shield, lures him back to fight. The shield lies at the man’s feet and is a recurring motif in another painting from the same series, Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield.
Two men stand huddled together. They wear stunning robes and headdresses made of sumptuous fabrics, both ‘oriental’ in style (from the Eastern Mediterranean). Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s lively outlines and visible brushstrokes emphasise the flamboyant sleeves and folds of the clothing. Hints of primary colours appear against more sombre tones, while the brilliant sunlight and subtle shade pick out the men’s expressive faces and textured beards. Tiepolo was immensely skilled at drawing faces, which is particularly noticeable here in the weathered complexion of the aged man closest to us.
This is one of four paintings that once decorated a room in the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. The figures are inspired by Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a popular sixteenth-century poem that tells of the ill-fated love between a Christian knight (Rinaldo) and a Saracen sorceress (Armida). The characterful old man with a fluffy white beard is probably the magician of Ascalon who, after showing Rinaldo heroic images of warfare in a shield, lures him back to fight. The shield lies at the man’s feet and is a recurring motif in another painting from the same series, Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield.
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Two Men in Oriental Costume
Four Decorative Scenes
These four narrow canvases were painted during the 1740s by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo to decorate a room on the second floor of the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. Tiepolo was enjoying growing fame across Italy at this time; receiving prestigious commissions for monumental ceiling paintings and wall decorations.
The paintings formed part of a complex decorative scheme, with which a ceiling painting (now in Canberra) and four allegorical figures (now divided between New York and Amsterdam), have been associated. Tiepolo’s four paintings in the National Gallery – Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield, Seated Man, Woman with Jar and Boy, Two Men in Oriental Costume and Two Orientals seated under a Tree – are inspired by Torquato Tasso’s popular sixteenth-century poem Jerusalem Delivered. Set during the First Crusade, a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule, the poem tells of the ill-fated love between the Saracen sorceress Armida and Rinaldo, a Christian knight. Tiepolo’s pale pastel tones and lively brushwork in these scenes create a dazzling and exotic atmosphere.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is best known for his monumental ceiling paintings and wall decorations which transformed palaces and monasteries across Europe, from his native Venice to Germany and Spain. Painted at a time when Tiepolo’s fame was growing across Italy, these four narrow canvases once adorned a room on the second floor of the Palazzo Cornaro (or Corner) on the Campo San Polo, Venice.
The interior of the sixteenth-century Palazzo Cornaro was extensively redecorated between 1736 and 1747 in preparation for a marriage. Payments for work in the Sala degli Specchi (Room of Mirrors), on the second floor, are recorded in the 1740s. The room had an allegorical ceiling painting at its centre (now in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) and the walls were decorated with woodwork and mirrors. Four canvases with female allegorical figures, painted in monochrome and simulating bas-relief sculpture, hung above the doors (these are now thought to be the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In addition, there were four long rectangular canvases by Tiepolo (‘Quattro pezzi di quadro bislunghi’) which have been convincingly linked to the four narrow, upright paintings in the National Gallery. As indicated by an eighteenth-century inventory, the paintings drew inspiration from Torquato Tasso’s popular sixteenth-century poem Jerusalem Delivered. Set during the First Crusade (1096–9), a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule, the poem tells of the ill-fated love between the Saracen sorceress Armida and Rinaldo, a Christian knight.
The elaborate costumes and headgear worn by the figures in Tiepolo’s four paintings – Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield, Seated Man, Woman with Jar and Boy, Two Men in Oriental Costume and Two Orientals seated under a Tree – reflect the eighteenth-century taste for the exotic. The pale pastel tones and Tiepolo’s lively brushwork in these paintings would have helped create a dazzling atmosphere in the room. The stories told in Tasso’s poem were especially popular in eighteenth-century Europe, where they often became the subject of operas, plays and concerts as well as art.




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