Troops Advancing toward a City Gate 1696 - 1770

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo made this drawing of troops advancing toward a city gate using pen and brown ink with gray wash over black chalk. This isn't paint slapped onto canvas, but painstaking handwork. Look at the hatching, the small, close parallel lines. This is how Tiepolo has built up the image, bit by bit. The pen strokes act like a kind of social structure: the closer together they are, the more tone and weight they have. The wash goes on top to unify it all. The paper is visible in many places, giving an open feeling to the scene, while the ink lends a classical gravitas. Given the quantity of drawings Tiepolo produced, we can assume he had assistants who worked under his direction, so it’s hard to know how much of the labour was his. But it's this very process, this accretion of tiny, delicate marks, that brings the image to life, inviting us to consider the labor and process of art itself.