Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo

This exhibition highlights the most important gift of Old Master drawings in the Eskenazi Museum of Art's seventy-five year history. In 2010, Anthony J. Moravec, a Columbus, Indiana, businessman, donated twenty-four drawings by the eighteenth-century Italian master Giambattista Tiepolo, his son Domenico, and several of their contemporaries. 

The centerpiece is a group of a dozen drawings from Domenico Tiepolo's New Testament cycle. These large pen, brush, and ink drawings are not studies for other works, as was more typical of the period but rather unique designs that showcase the artist's deep understanding of the religious subject matter and his careful observation of the world around him. The exhibition's guest curator and catalogue author Adelheid M. Gealt--the Eskenazi Museum of Art's Director Emeritus and an expert on Domenico's drawings--believes that the series (numbering 320 known sheets) represents a feat unparalleled in the history of art.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo: Master Drawings from the Anthony J. Moravec Collection documents this important collection of master drawings. Donated by an individual to the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, it includes five drawings by the celebrated Venetian genius Giambattista Tiepolo and sixteen drawings by his most famous son, Domenico Tiepolo. Twelve of the sixteen form part of Domenico’s most important drawing series―his exhaustive visual exploration of the New Testament. Also included are two drawings discovered after the 2006 publication of Domenico Tiepolo: A New Testament and seen here for the first time. Gealt and Knox are world-renowned experts on the Tiepolos and this book will serve as a useful reference to understanding their work as draftsmen. This beautiful illustrated volume will appeal to art lovers, biblical scholars, and those who value the unique work of the Tiepolos.