The Woman with a Tambourine (1790s): Art, History and Details

The Woman with a Tambourine (1790s) 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:

Observed by Punchinello and friends, a centaur is subdued by a maiden’s musical charms. Rendered touchingly vulnerable, the creature lies with its head on the girl’s lap. One of the simplest instruments, the tambourine was typically played by itinerant musicians—nymphs, vagabonds, seducers—and was traditionally considered the quintessential attribute of the outsider, an aspect reinforced in the 20th century by Bob Dylan’s "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Object facts

• Title: The Woman with a Tambourine
• Date: 1790s
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727–1804)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, over black chalk; framing lines in pen and brown ink over graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.4 x 47.3 cm (13 15/16 x 18 5/8 in.); Image: 29.7 x 41.7 cm (11 11/16 x 16 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1947.12

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

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.