TIEPOLO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. – Painter, born in Venice on 5 March 1696, died in Madrid on 27 March 1770. Son of Domenico, a “parcenevole di vascello,” that is, a co-owner of a merchant vessel, and of Orsola; father of Gian Domenico and Lorenzo, likewise painters. He is universally recognized as the greatest painter of the eighteenth century.
As a young man, he learned the rudiments of art at the school of Gregorio Lazzarini. He then trained himself, following the example of Piazzetta, Bencovich, and Ricci; and later, having freed himself from the dark manner, he was inspired above all by Paolo Veronese. A precocious talent, at the age of twenty he exhibited a Pharaoh Drowned, which met with great success, for the feast of s. Rocco. In 1716 he painted the Sacrifice of Abraham for the church of the Ospedaletto, where it still remains. In 1717 he is mentioned in the books of the painters’ “fragilia”; on 21 November 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, sister of the painters Antonio and Francesco, and had nine children by her. After his first experiments in easel painting, T. established himself as a great fresco painter; and over more than half a century of astonishingly prolific activity, he ennobled fresco painting, which had already been reduced to the status of “decorative art,” restoring it to the high artistic level of the golden age of Giorgione and Titian. Already in the ceiling of Palazzo Sandi in Venice, frescoed shortly before 1725, in which he depicted the Power of Eloquence, the creative impulse of the young artist appears in full development. A new dramatic inspiration, an extremely attentive study of movement, a darting play of light and shadow, reflections, and foreshortening: these were the revealing elements of his new pictorial language. In those years he frescoed the Glory of s. Teresa for the church of the Scalzi, assisted in the perspective work by the quadraturista of Bolognese-Bibienesque training, Girolamo Mengozzi-Colonna, who would remain his faithful collaborator until T.’s departure for Madrid (1760). In 1726 he was summoned to decorate the Chapel of the Sacrament in Udine Cathedral, and in the documents he is already called a “celebrated” painter. In Udine he also frescoed (1725–28), perhaps with some interruptions, the Archbishop’s Palace, depicting on the staircase the Fall of the Rebel Angels, various Stories from the Old Testament in the gallery, and a Judgment of Solomon in the “red room”; these frescoes mark a decisive step in the conquest of light, not only for T. himself but for all the painting of the period. During the same period T. supplied Palazzo Dolfin in Venice with ten large canvases depicting subjects from Roman history, now divided among the Hermitage in Leningrad (5), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (2), and a private collection in New York (3).
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In Milan, in 1731, he frescoed five magnificent ceilings in Palazzo Archinto, all destroyed in the bombardments of 1943. The artist worked with incredible rapidity; and in the same year he decorated the main salon of Palazzo Dugnani (then Casati) with frescoes. These paintings, clear in color and full of light, brought the artist new commissions. From Bergamo he was urged to decorate the Colleoni Chapel, where in fact he frescoed four allegorical figures in the pendentives of the vault in 1732; while in the following year he completed the decoration of the chapel itself, depicting three large scenes from the Life of the Baptist, as well as a s. Mark and a Martyrdom of s. Bartholomew. During this first stay in Lombardy, which was nevertheless interrupted by journeys to Venice, T. brought a new atmosphere to the painting of the region. After working in Venice on various easel paintings, T. went to Vicenza, and in 1734 frescoed the staircase and the main hall of Villa Loschi at Biron. He then returned to Venice, painted the great frieze of the Brazen Serpent for the church of SS. Cosma and Damiano (now in the Accademia), and began the altarpiece with the Martyrdom of s. Agatha (installed only in 1747) for the church of the Santo in Padua. During this period he entered into relations with Count Algarotti, with whom he would remain bound by close friendship. T.’s palette grew still lighter, taking on silvery resonances; he completely abandoned the undulating manner and aimed at a more compact plastic solidity, at a greater “tension” of line. The king of Sweden, having been informed of the new Venetian pictorial star, commissioned Count de Tessin, his minister in Venice, to invite T. to go to Stockholm to paint the new Royal Palace; but the negotiations failed because the fees offered were too low for T.
In 1737 he was again in Milan, where he frescoed in the Chapel of S. Vittore in S. Ambrogio a Beheading of s. Victor and a Shipwreck of s. Satyrus (works in very poor condition); and it was certainly at that time that he decorated the ceiling of the sacristy of the Masses in the same Basilica with a Glory of s. Bernard, likewise destroyed in the bombardments of 1943. Between 1735 and 1740 T.’s art moved toward a new “classicism,” engaged in the search for a new canon of beauty. This can be seen in the two immense canvases at Verolanuova, with the Sacrifice of Melchizedek and the Fall of the Manna; and above all in the three paintings formerly in Villa Girola on Lake Como, one of which, with the Triumph of Auftrite, is now in the Dresden Gallery. But in those years he also created works of profound humanity and of a realism absolutely unusual for that period, such as the impressive Journey to Calvary, accompanied there by a Flagellation and a Crowning with Thorns, at S. Alvise in Venice. In these canvases T., almost anguished by the sacred themes, abandons every search for formal beauty in order to draw solely on the dramatic sense of Christ’s epic; and for this reason he was inspired by Titian and Rembrandt. During the same period, and certainly while working simultaneously on several projects, T. completed the fresco on the ceiling of the Gesuati in Venice (between May 1737, when he undertook it, and October 1739, when he finished it), in which he depicted s. Dominic Instituting the Rosary. Invited once again to Milan, in 1740 he painted for Palazzo Clerici the stupendous ceiling with the Olympus, which marked a new stage in the conquest of the painting of “skies.”
T. carried out intensely demanding work during the fifth decade of the century in his Venice. For the Scuola del Carmine he executed, between 1740 and 1743, the ceiling canvases, of which the central one, with the Virgin of Carmel, in its silvery play of light, represents one of his most harmonious creations. For the church of the Scalzi he frescoed (1743–44) the immense ceiling with the famous Transport of the Holy House of Loreto, unfortunately destroyed by an enemy bomb in 1915. He also painted much for the Venetian palaces: he supplied Palazzo Barbaro with the ceiling canvas depicting the Apotheosis of Francesco Barbaro (now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York), and with four oval overdoors, now dispersed among various collections; he painted for Palazzo Cornaro a beautiful Allegory of the Spouses (now in the Contini collection in Florence); and much else besides.
(Alinari photograph)