Artwork
Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine
Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine is a print by the Baroque artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. It dates from 1742 and is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
About this work
Overview
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo produced the print Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine in 1742. The work belongs to a series of whimsical studies known as the Caprices and is presently in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Subject & Meaning
The composition depicts a bustling, disorderly scene in which a central female figure strikes a tambourine while a horse rears behind her. Around them, a crowd of people and animals intertwine amid a vague backdrop of trees and buildings, suggesting a moment of chaotic festivity.
Technique & Style
Executed with loose, rapid lines, the drawing conveys a sketch‑like immediacy. Tiepolo employs chiaroscuro shading to model the horse and the woman’s hands, allowing those elements to emerge from the surrounding tangle. The overall effect is playful and dreamlike, characteristic of his Caprices series.
History & Provenance
Created in the mid‑18th century, the print entered the Cleveland Museum of Art’s holdings at an unspecified date, where it remains part of the museum’s European prints and drawings collection.
Artist & collection
Artist
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school.
Various Caprices: The Cavalier Mounting his Horse
Woman, Satyr Child, and Goat in a Landscape
Various Caprices: The Three Soldiers and the Boy
Scherzi di Fantasia: Satyr Family with the Obelisk
Shepherd with Cow and Two Sheep
Boy on a Donkey Watching over a Group of Animals
Caprices: Seated Beggar Woman with Two Children
Caprices: Seated Beggar
Various Caprices: The Philosopher Standing with Book