A Woman with her Hands on a Vase, Soldier, and Slave, from Capricci

A Woman with her Hands on a Vase, Soldier, and Slave, from Capricci is an influential etching on paper created by the Italian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) between 1740 and 1750. This piece is part of the artist’s celebrated series of prints known collectively as the Capricci, a collection of imaginative and often ambiguous scenes that highlight Tiepolo’s technical mastery of the graphic arts.

The classification as a print confirms the work was produced using the etching technique, allowing Tiepolo to achieve both the sharp, precise lines necessary for detailed figures and the subtle atmospheric depth that characterizes 18th-century Venetian style. The composition depicts a dynamic, crowded scene, mixing classical elements—such as the prominently featured vase—with figures identified as a woman, a soldier, and a slave. This grouping embodies the capriccio genre, where mythological, historical, and purely fantastic elements merge in a theatrically staged environment.

As a central figure of the Italian Rococo, Tiepolo produced the Capricci series alongside his monumental fresco commissions, using the medium of prints to disseminate his inventive compositions to a wider audience. The series is crucial to understanding the transition from Baroque intensity to Rococo lightness in Italy. The deliberate ambiguity of the narrative is typical of Tiepolo’s approach to these fantasy compositions, inviting viewers to engage critically with the symbolic interplay between the figures and the setting. This significant etching is preserved in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, offering scholars and enthusiasts access to this important work, which is increasingly available through public domain initiatives due to its historical age.