Conservation funded in 2016 by Save Venice Inc. and the Friends of Florence Foundation.

A group of 48 drawings by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1692–1770), held in the Horne Museum of Florence, were selected for a collaborative conservation project sponsored by Save Venice together with the Friends of Florence Foundation. Forty-four of the drawings are bound in an album and an additional four from the same album are mounted separately. The drawings vary in size and subject, most being studies of visual motifs datable on stylistic grounds to about 1740. They are executed in black smoke ink and brown iron gallic ink on various types of paper.

The English architect, art historian, and collector Herbert P. Horne (1864–1916) bought these works by the famed Venetian artist in London in 1903; he brought them to Florence in when he acquired Palazzo Corsi in Via dei Benci 1911. The palazzo became a museum in 1916, after Horne’s death and the bequest of his home and art collection to the Italian state.

The Horne album was part of a series of nine volumes gathered by English collector Edward Cheney in the mid-nineteenth century, probably sold at Sotheby’s in 1885. Two of the nine albums are conserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and one is in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Together with the Horne album, they form one of the most important graphic testimonies of Tiepolo’s art.

Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo was Venice’s most important painter in the eighteenth century. During his illustrious career, Tiepolo created nearly 800 paintings and a vast number of frescoes on the walls of palaces, churches, and villas throughout Europe, with commissions extending well beyond Venice due to his popularity with the royal houses of Spain, Germany, Sweden, and Russia. In addition, Tiepolo was a prolific and prized draftsman. His sketches and drawings constitute an important legacy and provide invaluable insight into his artistic practices.

The conservation treatment of the drawings was preceded by non-invasive photographic studies in raking, ultraviolet, and infrared light to further understand the drawings’ state of conservation and the materials used to create them. Restorers then removed the pages from the album and cleaned the drawings with brushes, micro-vacuums, and conservation erasers to remove dirt and deposits. Glue stains were removed and tears repaired. As the drawings were long ago glued onto the pages of the album, they suffered from deformation of the supporting paper and from folds. They were gradually flattened back in shape through the application of Gortex and the use of a humidity chamber. The four drawings that had been removed from the album were also reinserted into the volume on new paper supports. The binding of the album, which was so tight that the album could not be fully opened, was restored to ease the movement of the pages. The original box housing the volume was repaired and expanded to fit the album, which was slightly enlarged after conservation treatment due to the insertion of Japanese paper veiling between each page for protective measure.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1692–1770)
Album of Various Drawings
c. 1740, pen and ink on paper

Museo Horne

Whistler, Catherine. Venice & Drawing 1500-1800: Theory, Practice and Collecting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.