Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo was the last of the great Venetian decorators, the purist exponent of the Italian Rococo, and arguably the greatest painter of the 18th century. He was trained under an obscure painter named Lazzarini but was really formed by the study of Sebastiano Ricci and Piazzetta among living painters and Veronese among the older masters. He was received in the Fraglia (Guild) in 1717 but had already painted the Sacrifice of Abraham (1715/6: Venice, Ospedaletto), a dark picture very much in the manner of Piazzetta and the 17th century generally.
In 1719 he married the sister of Guardi and at about this time his own lighter and looser style began to form. His first great commission for fresco decorations came in 1725, when he began to work in the Archibishop's Palce at Udine (completed 1728). These already show the virtuosity of his handling, the light tone and pale colours necessitated by fresco obviously helping him to break free from the dark Piazzettesque models he had previously followed. The Udine frescoes also show him developing as the creator of a world in steep perspective beyond the picture plane, with the architecture receding into dizzy distances. The highly specialized work of painting these architectural perspectives was done by Mengozzi-Colonna, who did this work for Tiepolo for most of his life.
Following the Udine frescoes Tiepolo travelled widely in N. Italy, painting many more frescoes in palaces and churches, as well as altarpieces in oil which culminate in the gigantic Gathering of the Manna and Sacrific of Melchizedek (c.1735-40: Verolanuova, Parish Church), each of which is about 30 feet high. The frescoes of this period culminate in the Antony and Cleopatra series in the Palazzo Labia, Venice, which were probaly finished just before 1750, when he left Venice for Wurzburg. He was invited to decorate the ceiling of the Kaiseraal in the Residenz at Wurzburg by the Prince-Bishop, Karl Phillip von Greiffenklau, and Tiepolo and his sons Giandomenico and Lorenzo arrived in Wurzburg at the end of 1750 and remained there until 1753, replacing Johann Zick, a German pupil of Piazzetta. Tiepolo painted the staircase with frescoes, some overdoors and some altarpieces, as well as the Kaisersaal, and both his sons, as well as several other assistants, helped in this gigantic task. The Palace itself is a superb example of German Rococo architecture and the combination of architecture and painting into one vast and airy allegory - apparently referring to the Prince-Bishop as a patron, but including Barbarossa and German history - is perhaps the most successful even in Tiepolo's career.
In 1755, after his return to Venice, he was elected first President of the Venetian Academy and in 1761 he was invited to Spain to decorate the Royal Palace in Madrid by Charles III. He arrived in 1762, with his sons and assistants, and painted the huge ceilings in the Palce in four years. In 1767 Charles commissioned seven altarpieces for Aranjuez, but Tiepolo's last years in Spain were embittered by intrigues on behalf of Mengs, the representative of that Neoclassicism which was soon to condemn his kind of splendid and radiant painting as frivolous. He died suddenly in Madrid.
His enormous output of frescoes and altarpieces was partly due to his practice (like Rubens before him) of painting small modelli which, when approved by the client, could be carried out by his skilled assistants under his own supervision. Scores of these modelli and sketches survive - the best-known is the so-called Querini in the Querini Gall., Venice, but this may, in fact, be by his son Domenico. He also etched many plates, and, with Marco Ricci, was one of the founders of the great school of 18th-century Venetian etchers. There are works in many churches, palaces, and galleries in Venice and in Amsterdam, Barnard Castle (Bowes Mus.), Bergamo (Cath., Accad.), Berlin, Boston (Mus. Gardner), Budapest, Cambridge Mass. (Fogg), Chicago, Cleveland Ohio, Detroit, Dresden, Edinburgh (NG), Este, London (NG, Dulwich, Courtauld Inst.), Melbourne (NG), Milan (Brera, Poldi-Pezzoli), Montreal, Munich, New York (Met. Mus.), Ottawa, Paris (Louvre), Philadelphia (Johnson), Rovigo, St Louis, Stockholm (Nat. Mus., Univ. Mus.), Stra (Villa Pisani), Stuggart, Toledo Ohio, Verona, Vicenza (Villa Valmarana), Vienna (KHM, Akad.), Washington (NG), and many other places.
His son Giovanni Domenico (1727-1804) was also a considerable painter in his own right, as well as his father's assistant and imitator. His frescoes in the Villa Valmarana (one is now known to be dated 1757) show that he had a different approach from his father's, less allegorical and more sardonic and matter-of-fact, with a delight in the activities of clowns and mountebanks. There are pictures by him in London (NG), and one in Dulwich which may be by him or his father, but there is a tendency to ascribe works to him which are not quite good enough for his father; if they are not really good enough for Domenico they get ascribed to Lorenzo (1736-76), about whose style little is known. Domencino made some etchings after his father's pictures, and two series, of the Flight into Egypt and the Via Crucis, which reveal his talents as a religious artist. There are also a few etchings by Lorenzo.
Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books)
