Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine

Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is a pivotal example of 18th-century Italian printmaking. Created during the height of the artist’s career, approximately between 1730 and 1755, this work is one of the ten etchings that comprise Tiepolo’s celebrated series, the Capricci (Vari Capricci). This collection established the artist not merely as a master draftsman for large frescoes, but as an innovative creator of intimate, complex graphic works.

The medium of etching allowed Tiepolo to achieve a spontaneous, flowing line quality that captures movement and expression rapidly. The composition focuses on a woman dressed in theatrical or exotic attire, actively engaged in playing the tambourine. Like others in the series, the subject mixes genre imagery with elements of classical ruins and fanciful characters, creating a deliberately enigmatic and whimsical scene characteristic of the period's interest in the picturesque caprice. Tiepolo employs dramatic contrasts between light and shadow, defining the figure through carefully etched lines rather than dense cross-hatching.

This piece, Various Caprices: The Woman with Tambourine, reflects the peak of Tiepolo's stylistic maturity in his prints. These imaginative compositions were highly influential across Europe and were widely circulated during the artist’s lifetime. As key examples of 18th-century graphic production, impressions of these seminal etchings are often found in the public domain today. This impression resides in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, serving as a significant record of the master's genius in the graphic arts.