The Tooth Puller, plate nine from Selection of Pictures from Venetian Collections
1765
Medium
Etching and engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 32.5 × 46.5 cm (12 13/16 × 18 5/16 in.); Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 36.6 × 49 cm (14 7/16 × 19 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
221700
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo made several small paintings to gratify the 18th-century predilection for images of contemporary Venetian life. His depictions of common people, Carnival, and the improvisational commedia dell’arte theater grew in popularity when translated into print by Jacopo Leonardis. The Tooth Puller shows a festival scene in which a quack dentist operates on a helpless victim writhing in pain; meanwhile his colleague waves an extracted tooth and rants at the largely indifferent re...