1000 Museums

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Giambattista Tiepolo), born on March 5th, 1696, in Venice, was the outstanding eighteenth-century master of the Grand Manner (a return to the styles of the ancient Greeks and Romans in devoting oneself not so much to accuracy but rather to innovation of style). The youngest child of Orsetta and Domenico Tiepolo, Giambattista would become an eminent artist, along with his brothers Domenico and Lorenzo. When Giambattista’s father died in 1697, his mother entrusted Giambattista to the care of Gregorio Lazzarini, an academic painter who taught him basic painting techniques. In 1719, Tiepolo married Maria Cecilia Guardi, and two of their ten children would become apprentices to their father. His early style was dark, eminent of the chiaroscuro( a technique of using contrasting light and dark tones) of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. Presumably, in 1717, Tiepolo was accepted into the ranks of the Fraglia, or the Venetian Guild of painters. By 1725, Tiepolo started to solidify his style while working at the Archbishop’s residence in Udine. Influenced by Lazzarini, Piazzetta, Sebastiano Ricci, and Paolo Veronese, his mature style became lighter as he adopted a more elegant touch and brilliant palette. His art celebrated the imagination and fantasy (fantasia) by transposing the world of ancient history, myth, religion, and sacred legends into a grandiose, even theatrical language.Tiepolo completed frescos for various churches, villas, and palaces in Venice and throughout Italy, including The Miracle of the Holy House of Loreto (1743), and Rinaldo Enchanted by Armida (1742-45). In 1755, two years after Tiepolo returned from Babaria, he was elected the first president of the Venetian Academy. In 1761, Tiepolo was invited to the court of Charles III of Spain to paint the Palacio Real in Madrid. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died suddenly on March 27th, 1770.