Giambattista Tiepolo, or Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice, March 5, 1696 - Madrid, March 27, 1770), was one of the great masters of Italian painting.
He gained fame at a young age, and became best known for his large frescoes in churches and palaces. During his lifetime he became one of Europe's leading decorators, but also left significant work in easel painting and printmaking.
His style reflects the heritage of Classicism and Baroque, but is fully expressed in a Rococo style, a current of which he is one of the main representatives, consolidating a work that combines grandeur, versatility, elegance and lightness, with a dynamic figuration, an original color palette and a free and confident brush stroke.
With the collaboration of his son and disciple Domenico, also a renowned painter, he dominated Venetian painting in the 18th century, and his continental fame lent luster to a Republic that was then in political and economic decay. He worked in Italy, Germania, Switzerland, Russia, and Spain.
Among his major works are the frescoes in the Episcopal Palace in Udine, the canvases for the Scuola del Carmine in Venice, and the frescoes in the Greiffenklau Palace in Würzburg.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Biography
Giambattista was born in Venice on March 5, 1696, the son of Domenico Tiepolo, a small shipowner, and Orsetta Maramgon. He was baptized on April 16 of the same year. The following year his father died, leaving the family in great financial difficulties.
He received his initiation in art from about 1710, in the studio of Gregorio Lazzarini, a painter who was successful in Venice and mastered a wide range of stylistic references.
The apprenticeship may have lasted until 1717, when Tiepolo first appears in the list of members of the painters' guild, indicating that he had completed his studies and was recognized as a professional. Membership in the guild was indispensable for any painter to be able to legally practice his craft and receive commissions on his behalf.
Early on, he was influenced by the tenebrist painting of Federico Bencovich and Piazzeta, but he also received a strong influence from the masters of the Venetian Renaissance, such as Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. In 1715 he begins painting in the Venetian church of Ospedaletto, depicting figures of the apostles, using dark tones and strong contrasts.
Tiepolo by this time worked for the doge Giovanni II Cornaro, painting pictures and portraits in his palace, among which the portrait of the doge Marco Cornaro (1716), with warm and light pastel tones, reminiscent of the work of Sebastiano Ricci. On August 11 he exhibited his sketch for a Crossing of the Red Sea on the feast of St. Rocco.
Tiepolo then commissioned canvases and frescoes for several churches and noble families in Venice and surrounding towns such as Biadene and Padua. In Padua he left his first important work, in the Villa Baglioti, decorated with mythological frescoes between 1719 and 1720.
Still in 1719 he married the noble Cecilia Guardi, sister of painters. With her he would have nine children. Two of them, Domenico and Lorenzo, were painters.
From 1726 he can be considered a mature artist. He becomes established at this time with a series of masterpieces made for the Dolfin family. Dionisio Dolfin, then archbishop of Udine, commissioned him to decorate the chapel of the episcopal palace, an innovative work, in terms of sacred themes, for the light and pastoral atmosphere, also praised for the original colors and the courtly elegance in the conception of the figures.
From the same period is another series of ten large canvases created for the Dolfin Palace in Venice, depicting scenes of battles and triumphs of ancient Rome.
A prolific and prestigious artist, he continued to make important works, where canvases for the church of Verolanuova (1735-1740), the Scuola dei Carmini (1740-1747), and the Church of the Barefoot (1743-1744; destroyed) in Cannaregio can be cited;
ceilings for the palaces Arquinto and Casati-Dugnani in Milan (1731), the decoration of the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo (1732-1733), a ceiling for the Gesuati in Venice (1737-1739), the decoration of the Clerici Palace in Milan (1740), the Villa Cordellini in Montecchio Maggiore (1743-1744), and the ballroom of the Labia Palace in Venice (1745-1750).
By 1750 his reputation was already established throughout Europe. In this year he was commissioned by the prince-bishop of Würzburg to decorate his palace. With the collaboration of his painter sons, he left two large frescoes, one on the ceiling of the Imperial Hall and the other on the ceiling of the monumental entrance.
The latter, showing an Allegory of Continents populated with mythological gods and historical and allegorical figures, is among his most acclaimed works.
In 1761 King Carlo III of Spain hires Tiepolo to adorn with frescoes the rooms of the new Royal Palace in Madrid. He worked for several years in Spain, dying in 1769 in the capital of that country, being buried in the church of San Martin, already destroyed.