Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) was the son of the great painter and master of the fresco Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo. Domenico painted and did frescos as well, but
his most amazing work was series of drawings featuring the commedia dell'arte character Punchinello, done towards the end of his life.
The series comprised 104 pen and wash images which explored the
character in unexpected ways. Domenico showed him in childhood,
in the kitchen cooking polenta, imprisoned, and finally dead and buried
(see above.) Indeed, Domenico treated Punchinello as an early
version of Krusty the Clown, but with a depth of feeling that
transformed him from a stock figure of the comic stage into an image of
everyman, a clown of Shakespearean dimensions.
The drawings are free, almost casual, but incredibly beautiful.
The series was sold and dispersed in 1921 but in 1986 77 of them were
collected and superbly reproduced in a book, which is out of print but
still available, for a price, through online booksellers. It's
well worth tracking down.