Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), Italian painter, who was the last great master of the Venetian school, and the greatest muralist in the Rococo style.

Tiepolo was born in Venice on March 5, 1696, the son of a merchant. He studied with various Venetian painters but was most influenced by the 16th-century Venetian master Paolo Veronese. Tiepolo was first listed with the Venetian painters' guild in 1717. He was patronized by the Venetian doge and by other noble families of Venice and other north Italian cities.

Tiepolo's art consisted principally of large frescoes or oil paintings on walls and ceilings designed to harmonize with the ornate, curvilinear, Rococo architecture of the day. They present convincing, almost visionary biblical and mythological themes, and scenes of everyday life. The composition is dramatic, the line fluent and elegant, the colour light and delicate, and the treatment of light highly atmospheric. Tiepolo's lighthearted style and pleasing pastel colouring remained popular long after architects began building in the more austere, rectilinear Neo-Classical style. Tiepolo also painted oil panels, chiefly altarpieces, that show the same graceful form and charming colour as his murals.

Among Tiepolo's early frescoes are Angels Bearing the Casa Santa from Nazareth to Loreto (1743-1744) and other scenes for the Church of the Scalzi in Venice (destroyed in World War I). Especially notable are scenes from the lives of Antony and Cleopatra decorating the grand hall of the Palazzo Labia in Venice (before 1750). A ceiling painting in oil from this period is the Apotheosis of Francesco Barbaro (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Tiepolo spent the years 1750-1753 in Würzburg, Germany, under the patronage of its bishop, for whom he painted German historical and classical mythological scenes in the episcopal palace. In 1754 he returned to Venice, where he became director of the Venetian Academy. Frescoes of this period include The Triumph of Faith (1754-1755) in the Church of the Pietà in Venice, scenes (1757) for the Villa Valmarana in Vicenza, and scenes (1758) for the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. Among his oil paintings are the Crucifixion (City Art Museum, St Louis), Holy Family with St Gaetano (Academy, Venice), and many altarpieces in Venetian churches. Tiepolo also made many small, free oil sketches, finished drawings, and imaginative etchings. He was aided in producing this large volume of work by his sons Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and Lorenzo Tiepolo.

In 1762, at the invitation of Charles III, Tiepolo and his sons went to Spain to decorate the royal palace in Madrid. In the guardroom they painted the Smithy of Vulcan, in the antechamber Apotheosis of Spain, and on the ceiling of the throne room the magnificent Spain and Her Provinces (1762-1767). Tiepolo died in Madrid, on March 27, 1770.