The Game of Bowls (1797–1804): Art, History and Details

The Game of Bowls (1797–1804) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727–1804).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Here, Punchinello characters sporting their signature conical hats and hooked-nosed masks compete against a group of men in a lively game of bocce,an Italian bowling game. While their exaggerated movements infuse the drawing with a sense of whimsy, the massive prison fortress behind them suggests surveillance and control. Although not overtly political, this detail may allude to Venice’s fall to the French in 1797, which led to a ban on the commedia dell’arte, Italy’s popular theater tradition with its mocking Punchinellos.

Object facts

• Title: The Game of Bowls
• Date: 1797–1804
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727–1804)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, over traces of black chalk; framing lines in brown ink over graphite on antique laid paper
• Dimensions: Image: 29.7 x 41.6 cm (11 11/16 x 16 3/8 in.); Sheet: 35.5 x 47.3 cm (14 x 18 5/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1937.571

A detail from the museum

This drawing is part of a larger series that depicts the life of Punchinello, a clown-like character derived from Italian popular theater.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Six Drawings from the Life of Pulcinella by the younger Tiepolo." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 4 (April 1938): 46-49.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.