18th c. Circle of Tiepolo Drawing, former Seymour de Ricci collection, c. 18th century

Circle of Tiepolo
Untitled (Hercules and Antaeus)
8 11/16 x 6 5/16 in. (22 x 16 cm)
Framed: 14 x 111/4 x 3/4 in.

This drawing comes by succession from the Seymour Montefiore Robert Rosso de Ricci collection (1881-1942). He was an archaeologist, bibliographer and art historian.

The Tiepolo drawing that this work is based on can be found in Harvard Art Museum's Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA, object no. 1943.545. The Uffizi Gallery describes the scene: "Greek mythology tells that Heracles, or Hercules, in one of his twelve labours defeated Antaeus, a giant of superhuman strength who slaughtered men. The power of Antaeus derived from his contact with the earth, since he was Gaea’s son, the goddess of the earth. For that reason, Hercules, to weaken the giant, lifted him up and killed him with the strength of his arms."

Indeed, the original Tiepolo drawing of Hercules and Antaeus belongs to a series of drawings, all illustrating this bold mythological subject, which was one of the artist's favorite themes to draw and which he explored repeatedly towards the end of his career.

About Seymour de Ricci (from arthistorians.info):
Bibliographer, papyrologist, collector, and historian of Merovingian tapestries. He was educated at the Lycée Janson de Sailly between 1890 and 1898 and admitted to the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, gaining his bachelier ès lettres in 1897 and his licence in 1901. In 1897 he published an inventory of the Roman inscriptions in Côtes-du-Nord, Brittany. There he met Émile Guimet (1836-1918), and Salomon Reinach. He and Reinach, the director of the Musée National des Antiquités, founder of the École du Louvre and a member of the Institut de France became close friends, Reinach introducing the young Ricci to social-scholarly world of continental Europe. In 1901 de Ricci became a French citizen. After being turned down for a post in the museum of antiquities in Alexandria in 1902, he turned to the life of a private scholar. Until the 1920s, most of de Ricci’s scholarly work was in Egyptology and epigraphy. Already, however, his interest in bibliography was blossoming. He suggested in 1906 the creation of a corpus and inventory of editions of the early English printer John Caxton to the Bibliographical Society of Oxford (published 1909). He wrote the sixth edition revision of the Guide de l’amateur de livres à gravures du XVIIIe siècle of Henry Cohen (1806-1880) in 1912. Throughout his life, de Ricci demonstrated that he could use iconography creatively to date and catalog objects. His Twenty Renaissance Tapestries from the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection (1913) established a chronology of the Merovingian weavings through the head-dress of the women depicted. In the 1920’s de Ricci began cataloging medieval and renaissance manuscripts, which his fame today is based. He was commissioned to write the catalog of the Musée Cognacq-Jay, which purportedly took him only several weeks to write, in 1929. That year, too, de Ricci delivered the Sandars lectures (in bibliography) at Cambridge on “English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts, 1530-1930, and their Marks of Ownership” published in 1930. de Ricci visited the United States as part of a group led by Reinach’s brother, Théodore (1860-1928), a classical scholar and numismatist during the early post-war years. de Ricci made excellent contacts in the states and thereafter made visits nearly every year to catalog the private collections there. These included John Clawson’s collection early English printed books, published 1924, and the collections of Mortimer Schiff (1877-1931), (both his Italian maiolica, 1927, and his French bookbindings, 1935). de Ricci continued his book personal book collecting and selling. His bilingualism and art knowledge made him an ideal correspondent for the New York Herald between 1929-32. His Handlist of Manuscripts in the Library of the Earl of Leicester, at Holkham Hall appeared in 1932. A second corpus, the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada was launched by de Ricci though the auspices of American Council of Learned Societies, taken over by the Library of Congress in 1929. In 1934 he adopted a similar inventory of manuscripts for Britain, sponsored by the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research. With completion in sight, including the contents of the British Museum, he was once again pre-empted by war. In 1935 he donated his Voltaire letters to the Bibliothèque Nationale. The same year he was appointed an officer of the Légion d’honneur. de Ricci, in Paris for the fall of the city to the Nazis in 1940, secured his personal collection of manuscripts and letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale the same year. He died in Suresnes, on the perimeter of Paris, in 1942 and is buried at Père Lachaise in Paris. His art was willed to the éunion des Musées Nationaux, and the remained of his books and manuscripts to the Bibliothèque Nationale. Ricci’s inventory of British manuscripts remains, now in the Palaeography Room of the University of London Library, and in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. de Ricci’s auction sale catalogs were one of the largest private collections to be donated. Among his many art-historical friends and correspondents were Louis Réau and Bernard Berenson. de Ricci’s books on the provenance of rare books are still consulted todya. He created three reference books of manuscripts and rare books: Catalogue raisonné des premières impressions de Mayence, 1445-1467, Guide de l’amateur de livres à gravures du XVIIIe siècle, and Census of Medieval Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. de Ricci’s industry was amazing. TheCensus of Medieval Manuscript, amounting to three volumes and organizing 15,000 books, letters, and charters from a total of 494 libraries, took only eight years, beginning in 1935 (1937, and 1940).