A Centaur and a Female Faun in a Landscape

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

about 1775

Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, Pen, Ink, Chalk

J. Paul Getty Museum

In this barren landscape a centaur and a female faun lie enraptured in each other's arms. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo borrowed from mythology to invent this erotic image, which is part of a series of drawings he made of centaurs, fauns, and satyrs. To the Greeks and Romans, these imaginary creatures represented lust. Tiepolo also modeled them after a legend about Hercules, who killed a centaur for attempting to seduce his wife. A quiver of arrows, a bow, and a club-weapons identified with Hercules-lie near the centaur. The centaur's head is thrown back, and he reclines as if dead, but the faun's joyful expression conveys otherwise. Al