Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Born Mar. 5, 1696, in Venice; died Mar. 27, 1770, in Madrid. Italian painter, draftsman, and engraver. Foremost representative of the Venetian school in the 18th century.

Tiepolo studied in Venice under G. Lazzarini. His style was later influenced by P. Veronese and G. B. Piazzetta. Although he worked primarily in his native city, Tiepolo also accepted commissions in Milan (1731–32, 1737, and 1740), Würzburg (1750–53), and Madrid (1762–70). His early compositions, from the period 1716–34, are noted for their dramatic, spirited forms, dark colors, and strong contrasts of light and dark shadings, or chiaroscuro. Already evident in these works are the rich fantasy and decorative grandeur that later came to be identified with Tiepolo’s style. Examples are the series of paintings he did after 1725 for the Dolfin Palace in Venice (now in the Hermitage, Leningrad, and in other collections).

Between 1735 and 1750, Tiepolo displayed a freer and more expressive technique in the execution of his subjects. Through the use of a brighter palette, he achieved more subtle nuances of color, as in the decorated ceilings of the Venetian churches of the Gesuati (1737–39) and the Scalzi 1743–44). During the 1750’s and 1760’s—a period in which he enjoyed wide recognition, attested locally by his election as president of Venice’s Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1756–58)—Tiepolo was commissioned to do a series of frescoes at several foreign royal courts. These and other works of the same period—for example, the decorations of the Residenz in Würzburg (1750–53), the Palazzo Labia in Venice (c. 1750), the Villa Valmarana, near Vicenza (1757), and the Palazzo Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice (1758)—are distinguished by their splendor and festive mood, conveyed by radiant colors in delicate red, brown, golden yellow, blue, pearl gray, and silvery tones.

In addition to decorations, Tiepolo also painted canvases, the most important of which he created during the 1740’s and 1750’s. Impressive for the vivid emotionality of their images and for their masterly technique, they include The Triumph of Amphitrite (c. 1740, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden) and The Adoration of the Magi (1753, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). From 1762 to 1766, Tiepolo decorated several ceilings in the Royal Palace in Madrid.

Among Tiepolo’s other major works—all fine examples of his individual treatment of religious, classical, and historical themes—are The Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1725, Brera, Milan); Rachel Hiding the Idols (begun 1726, Palazzo Arcivescovile, Udine); The Gathering of the Manna (c. 1735–40, Church of Verolanuova, near Brescia); Danae (c. 1736, University Museum, Stockholm); Two Saints (c. 1740–45, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow); The Marriage of Barbarossa (1750–53, Residenz, Würzburg); and The Death of Dido (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).

With Tiepolo, the tradition of Italian decorative art on a grand scale, which began in the 16th century, came to an end. Yet his frescoes and paintings—with their apparently limitless expanses, their powerful vitality and pictorial freedom, their perfection of light and air effects, and their luminosity and innovation of perspective, marked by bold foreshortenings—represent less an end than a culmination of a long and influential tradition. What Tiepolo possessed in particular as a decorative artist was the ability to broaden and deepen actual space by imaginatively integrating his huge compositions with the rest of the interior.

Tiepolo also painted portraits. Representative works are the Portrait of Antonio Riccobono (c. 1745, Accademia dei Concor-di, Rovigo) and the group compositions Meeting of the Grand Council of the Knights of Malta, or simply Concilium in Arena (1748–50, Pinacotheca, Udine), and Apotheosis of the Pisani Family (1761–62, Villa Pisani, Strä). An accomplished draftsman, Tiepolo produced many drawings and etchings, notably Capricci and Scherzi di Fantasia, a series of etchings in which the artist’s expressive manner and bold technique are evident in the picturesque depiction of fantastic subjects.