Giovanni Battista Tiepolo  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Google Wikipedia Wiktionary Wiki Commons Wikisource Wordpress YouTube Shop Featured: The Trylon and Perisphere, two modernistic structures at the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940 Photo: Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline (Samuel H. Gottscho)

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo (March 5, 1696 - March 27, 1770) was a Venetian painter and printmaker, considered among the last "Grand Manner" fresco painters from the Venetian republic.

Critical assessment and legacy

In his most fluid elaborations, Tiepolo has closest affinity to Ricci, Piazzetta, and Federico Bencovich. He is a shadowless fresco artist, a sunnier rococo Pietro da Cortona. His sumptuous historical set-pieces are enveloped in a regal luminosity. He is principally known for his fresco work, particularly his panegyric ceilings. These followed the Baroque tradition begun a century before by Pietro da Cortona, converting roof to painted sky, elevating petty aristocrats to divine status, and allowing for vast compositions that merged with the delicate ornamentation of the stucco frames. Like Luca Giordano, his palette was muted, almost water-color like. Like Giordano, he was prolific. With an unrivaled Sprezzatura, he painted worlds of fresco, and some such as the walls of Villa Valmarana in Vicenza, not only peer into the mythologic scenes, but are meant to relocate viewers into their midst. The earliest example of this is perhaps his canvases in the Ca' Dolfin, which allowed Tiepolo to introduce exuberant costumes, classical sculpture, and action that appears to spill from the frames into the room. Originally set into recesses, they were surrounded with frescoed frames.

While his painting is infused with the Venetian spirit, his luminosity is not seen in the previous masters; however, Tiepolo is considered the last "Olympian" painter of the Venetian Republic. Like Titian before him, Tiepolo was an international star, treasured by royalty far afield for his ability to depict glory in fresco.

His children painted figures with a design similar to that of their father, but with distinctive, including genre, styles.

List of works

Paintings before 1740

Works from 1740–1750

Works after 1750