The Tooth Puller, plate nine from Selection of Pictures from Venetian Collections

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 revelers. The text below, added by Leonardis, further lampoons the prankster’s conduct:Now with his voice, now with his hand Now money, now teeth extracts the Charlatan.