Attributed to Lorenzo Tiepolo

Attributed to LORENZO TIEPOLO (Venice, 1736-Somosaguas, 1776).
"Study for portrait of a maja.
Pastel on vejurado paper.
Measurements: 35,5 x 25,5 cm; 76,5 x 66,5 cm (frame).

Lorenzo Tiepolo, son of the famous Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, distinguished himself within the powerful family current as a portraitist and accomplished pastelist. The portrait of the maja shown here can be compared to the collection of pastels preserved in the Spanish royal collections. All of them show popular types resolved with sensual Venetian ranges. They are idealized portraits, through which Tiepolo reinvents the human types to go beyond stereotypes through gestures and costumes. The eighteenth-century aristocracy valued the emulation and sublimation of the popular, as did Goya at the same time. The present painting could be a study of a fragment for a larger composition, in which the variegated atmosphere and the characteristic crossing of glances that Tiépolos used so much in his works (see, for example, "La mielera", Galería de las Colecciones Reales, Madrid).

Over time, the figure of Lorenzo Tiepolo has been rediscovered, acquiring a personality of his own, beyond being an imitator of his father's figure. It is now known that he played an important role in the decoration of the ceiling of the Throne Room of the Royal Palace in Madrid (1762-64). His work as a portrait painter deserves to be highlighted, since already in his early works of his youth he reveals his ability to create works of delicate palette and barely visible drawing. The most obvious reference is that of Rosalba Carriera, whom Lorenzo was forced to meet. He was the youngest of Giambattista's ten children. In 1750 he traveled to Wurzburg with his father and his brother Giovanni Domenico, where he worked with them on the decorative fresco cycle of the lavish Wurzburger Residenz. In 1753 he returned to Venice, leaving a good memory in Germany despite his youth, as evidenced by his correspondence years later with Prince-Archbishop Adam Friederich von Seinsheim. On March 31, 1762, Giambattista and his two sons Giandomenico and Lorenzo left for Spain. They will arrive in Madrid on June 4. Lorenzo was not lacking in commissions: in 1763 he painted a series of pastel portraits of the Prince of Asturias and the Infante Don Gabriel. Later (1763-64) he will be busy with the decoration of a Chinese cabinet in the Royal Palace of Madrid. Later he will be in charge of painting the vault of the Cabinet of the Birds and other minor commissions in the same building.