An Italian greyhound in profile

This elegant drawing of an Italian greyhound is inscribed on the back, in the artist’s own hand, with the date ‘Xbre 72’ (December 1772) and a high collection number ( ‘No. 3447. ’).

The date corresponds with Jim Byam Shaw’s observations on Domenico’s animal drawings: according to the scholar, most of these were made after the artist’s return from Spain (1770) and are related to the fresco decoration of the Tiepolo family’s villa in Zianigo, north-east of Padua. Part of the frescoes were removed in 1907 and are today in the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice; another part (among which most of the small animal scenes) were left behind, or have been destroyed.

Our study is part of a larger group of sketches of Italian greyhounds (whippets) scattered between the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Biblioteca Reale in Torino and various private collection, connected by Byam Shaw to the lost ‘sovrapporte con cani’ (‘overdoors with dogs’) described by Molmenti in 1907 in the downstairs living room in Zianigo¹.

Despite their naturalness, the scholar points out as ‘relatively few of these animals, certainly not the more exotic ones, were observed from life’². Domenico’s sources of inspiration have been identified in the prints of Stefano Della Bella (1610-1664), Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) and of the Augsburg artist Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), of whom he possessed a large number.

Domenico’s fascination for the elegance of the dogs’s profile is also attested in a small canvas today in Ca’ Rezzonico (fig. 1), identified by Lorenzetti as a fender for the chimneypiece in the Pulcinella Room in Zianigo or, according to Guiotto, as a part of the decoration of a lost wing of the villa entirely populated with frescoed animals³. The resemblances of the shape, composition and background landscape of the two images suggests that our drawing was connected to the same decorative scheme.