TIEPOLO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. - Painter, b. in Venice on 5 March 1696, d. in Madrid on 27 March 1770. Son of Domenico "parcenevole di vascello," that is, co-owner of a merchant ship, and of Orsola; father of Gian Domenico and of Lorenzo, likewise painters. He is universally recognized as the greatest painter of the eighteenth century.
As a youth, in the school of Gregorio Lazzarini, he learned the rudiments of art. He then formed himself, on the example of Piazzetta, Bencovich and Ricci; and later, having freed himself from the tenebrist current, he drew inspiration above all from Paolo Veronese. A precocious talent, at the age of twenty he exhibited a Pharaoh Submerged, which met with great success, for the feast of St. Roch. In 1716 he painted for the church of the Ospedaletto the Sacrifice of Abraham, which still exists. In 1717 he is named in the books of the painters' "fragilia"; on 21 Nov. 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, sister of the painters Antonio and Francesco, and had nine children by her. After his first attempts in easel painting, T. established himself as a great fresco painter; and in more than half a century of activity, which has something prodigious about it, he ennobled fresco, already reduced to the task of "decorative art," restoring it to the high artistic level of the golden ages 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 impetus of the young artist appears in full development. A new dramatic inspiration, a most attentive study of movements, a brisk play of lights and shadows, of reflections, of foreshortenings: these are the revealing elements of his new pictorial language. In those years he frescoed the Glory of St. Teresa for the church of the Scalzi, aided in the perspectival part 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 called to decorate, in the cathedral of Udine, the chapel of the Sacrament, and in the documents he is already called a "celebrated" painter. In Udine he also frescoed (1725-28), perhaps with some intervals, the Palazzo Arcivescovile, depicting in the grand staircase the Fall of the Rebel Angels, in the gallery various Stories of the Old Testament and in the "red hall" a Judgment of Solomon; and these frescoes mark a decisive step in the conquest of light, not only for T. himself, but for the whole painting of the period. In the same period T. supplied for the Palazzo Dolfin in Venice ten large canvases with 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).
The following table provides the information in a tabular format:
In Milan, in 1731, he frescoed five admirable ceilings in the Palazzo Archinto, all destroyed in the bombardments of 1943. The artist creates with incredible rapidity; and in the same year he decorated with frescoes the main salon of the Palazzo Dugnani (then Casati). These paintings, limpid in color, full of light, earned the artist new commissions. From Bergamo he was urged to decorate the Colleoni chapel, where in fact in 1732 he frescoed four allegorical figures in the pendentives of the vault; while in the following year he completed the decorations of the chapel itself, depicting there three great scenes from the Life of the Baptist as well as a St. Mark and a Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. During this first Lombard stay, which was moreover interrupted by journeys to Venice, T. brought a new air to the painting of the region. After having worked in Venice on various easel paintings, T. went to Vicenza, and in 1734 frescoed the grand staircase and the main hall of the Villa Loschi at Biron. Then he returned to Venice, painted the great frieze of the Brazen Serpent for the church of SS. Cosma and Damiano (now at the Accademia), began the altarpiece with the Martyrdom of St. Agatha (installed only in 1747) for the church of the Santo in Padua. In this period he entered into relations with Count Algarotti, to whom he would remain bound in close friendship. T.'s palette brightens further, takes on silvery resonances, abandons altogether the undulating sense, aims at a more compact plastic attainment; at a greater "tension" of line. The King of Sweden, informed of the new Venetian pictorial star, charged 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 proposed were too meager for T.
In 1737 he is again in Milan, where he frescoed in the chapel of St. Victor in S. Ambrogio a Decollation of St. Victor and a Shipwreck of St. Satyrus (much deteriorated works); and certainly at that time he decorated the ceiling of the sacristy of the Masses, in that same Basilica, with a Glory of St. Bernard, this too destroyed by the bombardments of 1943. Between 1735 and 1740 T.'s art moves toward a new "classicism," is strained in the search for a new canon of beauty. One sees it in the two immense canvases of Verolanuova with the Sacrifice of Melchizedek and with the Fall of the Manna; and above all in the three paintings formerly in the Villa Girola on Lake Como, one of which, with the Triumph of Amphitrite, is now in the Dresden Gallery. But in those years he also created works of profound humanity and of a verism absolutely unusual for that period, such as the impressive Going to Calvary, which is accompanied 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 the epic of Christ: and he draws inspiration for this reason from Titian and from Rembrandt. In the same period, and certainly working simultaneously on several works, T. brought to completion (between May 1737, when he undertook it, and Oct. 1739, when he finished it) the fresco in the ceiling of the Gesuati, in Venice, in which he represented St. Dominic Instituting the Rosary. Invited again to Milan, he painted in 1740 for the Palazzo Clerici the stupendous ceiling with the Olympus, which marked a new stage in the conquest of the painting of "skies."
T. carried out an extremely intense labor in 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 fluctuation 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 a great deal for the Venetian palaces: he supplied to the Palazzo Barbaro the ceiling canvas with the Apotheosis of Francesco Barbaro (now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York), and four oval overdoors, now dispersed among various collections; he painted for the Palazzo Cornaro a most beautiful Allegory of the Spouses (now in the Contini collection in Florence); and more besides.
But his masterpiece, for this period, is the decoration of Palazzo Labia, in which, collaborating with Mengozzi-Colonna, he marvelously frescoed the Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra and the Banquet of Cleopatra, with other minor scenes in the central hall: an unsurpassable example of joyous and solar pictorial illusionism. In this period, T. left Venice only in 1743, to fresco the Villa Cordellina at Montecchio Maggiore near Vicenza with scenes of the Generosity of Scipio and the Family of Darius; unfortunately dilapidated and left by the owners of the villa in complete abandonment (the ceiling was transported in 1919 to the Museum of Vicenza because of the very poor condition of the Villa).
Repeatedly urged to decorate the Residence of Würzburg, T. arrived with his sons Domenico (twenty-three years old) and Lorenzo (fourteen years old) on 12 Dec. 1750 in the capital of Franconia, splendidly welcomed by the prince-bishop Charles Philip of Greifenklau. In the three years of the German sojourn, T., laden with honors, created with his frescoes of the imperial hall (Kaisersaal), where he depicted on the ceiling Apollo Conducting the Bride to Barbarossa and on the walls the Marriage of Barbarossa and the Investiture of Bishop Harold, as well as on the ceiling of the immense staircase a stunning Apotheosis of Olympus, the most monumental complex of frescoes in existence, and perhaps his absolute masterpiece: certainly one of the most solemn artistic creations of the era. He also painted the two large altarpieces for the chapel of the Residence itself (1752) and the Epiphany (1753) for the church of Schwarzach (now in the Pinacoteca of Munich). Having returned to Venice toward the end of 1753, T., now having the work of his sons as a great aid, resumed his feverish activity; and certainly in this period, and perhaps a little earlier, he frescoed the Villa Soderini at Nervesa (destroyed in the war in 1917).
In June 1754 the frescoes on the ceiling of the Church of the Pietà were begun, and in Aug. 1755 finished: a creation among the most golden, luminous and musical of the artist. In the autumn of 1755 or in the spring of '56, he frescoed the Villa Contarini at Mira, depicting there, among other things, a Reception of Henry III, now in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. In 1757 he is at Vicenza, where he frescoes, aided by his son Domenico, the delightful complex of the Villa Valmarana (frescoes once erroneously believed all to be by the hand of T., and twenty years older); as well as the ceiling of the Palazzo Trento-Valmarana (destroyed in 1944). The following year he adorned with two frescoed ceilings, a Nuptial Allegory and an Allegory of Merit, the Palazzo Rezzonico; he returned to Udine, and between 14 Aug. and 16 Sept. 1759 he painted in the chapel of the Purità a ceiling with the Assumption; on Christmas Eve 1759 he placed on the altar of the church of the Grazie in Este the moving altarpiece of St. Tecla; in 1761 he frescoed in Verona the ceiling of the Palazzo Canossa with a Triumph of Hercules; between the autumn of that same year and the first months of 1762 he realized in the Villa Pisani at Stra the Glorification of the Pisani Family, in fresco, in the central salon. On 7 Apr. 1762, still accompanied by his sons, T. left for Madrid, arriving there only on 2 June, to decorate the Royal Palace at the invitation of Charles III. He frescoed in the great throne room an Apotheosis of Spain, which he signed and dated 1764; in the guard room, Aeneas Led to the Temple by Venus; in the "saleta" or antechamber "de la Reyna", a Triumph of the Spanish Monarchy (1764-66). Once the works were finished, he received the commission to paint for the church of Aranjuez seven altarpieces, which were later removed and dispersed (all of them, however, traceable). T.'s last years were embittered by court intrigues; but this did not prevent him from creating very lofty masterpieces, such as the St. James of Compostela, now in the Museum of Budapest, and above all a series of small canvases on sacred subjects, in which is expressed, with a profoundly sorrowful and human feeling, the true spirit of the artist. On 27 March 1770 the great painter suddenly died at the age of 74; and he was buried in the crypt of the S. Cristo in that church of S. Martino, near which he had taken lodging. But the church was destroyed and with it the tomb of the artist.
A very rich array of drawings accompanies T.'s pictorial activity. Almost every stage of his career is documented by preparatory studies in red chalk as well as charcoal, in pen as well as washed sepia; over a thousand known sheets; a small part of what the volcanic artist produced. Substantial groups of them are owned by the Museo Correr in Venice, the Museo Horne in Florence, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of New York; while the most conspicuous group is that formerly of Baron Sartorio, now in the Museo civico of Trieste. To T. are also owed some series of engravings, which are among the most exquisite things of the period, both for the freshness and luminosity of the line, and for the spirit of the inventions; in all ten Capricci, twenty-three Scherzi di fantasia, an Epiphany, a St. Joseph and two or three other disputed pieces, besides a few illustrations and vignettes for books.
It is impossible to list here all the works painted by T.; remembered, besides those indicated above, are the principal ones: Hamburg, Kunsthalle: Prayer in the Garden and Crowning with Thorns; Angers, Museum: Sketch for the ceiling of the Villa Pisani (1760); Arkhangelsk, U.S.S.R.: Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra and Banquet of Cleopatra; Bergamo, Cathedral: Martyrdom of St. John the Bishop (1743); Berlin, Museum: Martyrdom of St. Agatha; Burano, church of S. Martino: Crucifixion; Castelgomberto, Count da Schio coll.: Ulysses Discovers Achilles (and two side pieces) formerly in the Palazzo Sandi in Venice; Chicago, Art Institute: four canvases with stories of Rinaldo and Armida; Dresden, Gallery: Infant Mary Presented to the Eternal Father, 1759, formerly in Cividale; Bolzano, parish church: Baptism of the Emperor Constantine, 1759; Frankfurt, Staedel Institute: The Saints of the Crotta Family, 1754; Leningrad, Hermitage: Maecenas Presents the Arts to Augustus; London, National Gallery: St. Maximus and St. Oswald; St. Augustine and Other Saints; The Marriage of Barbarossa; Count Seilern: four sketches for the altarpieces of Aranjuez; Lugano, Thyssen coll.: Death of Hyacinth; Madrid, Prado: Immaculate Conception; Melbourne (Australia), National Gallery: Banquet of Cleopatra, formerly in the Hermitage; Milan, Brera: The Madonna of Carmel; M. Crespi coll.: The Family of Darius before Alexander, sketch for the Villa Cordellina, 1743; Rasini coll.: Repudiation of Hagar (1717 or '19, first known signed and dated work); Treccani coll.: Preaching of the Baptist; Mirano, parish church: Miracle of St. Anthony of Padua; Munich, Pinakothek: Rinaldo and Armida and Rinaldo Abandons Armida; Montreal (Canada), Museum: Alexander and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles; New York, Metropolitan Museum: St. Tecla (sketch for Este); Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy (sketch for Madrid); Oranienbaum (U.S.S.R.), Castle: Mars with the Graces, ceiling; Padua, Basilica of the Santo: Martyrdom of St. Agatha, 1737; Paris, Louvre: Last Supper; Apollo and Daphne; Musée Cognacq-Jay: Banquet of Nabal and Abigail; Parma, Pinacoteca: St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen; Philadelphia (U.S.A.), Johnson Coll.: Venus and Vulcan; Rovetta, parish church: Altarpiece of All Saints, 1734; Stuttgart, Gallery: Apollo, sketch for Würzburg; Stockholm, Museum: Magnanimity of Scipio, sketch for the Villa Cordellina, 1743; University Museum: Danae; Turin, Pinacoteca: Triumph of Aurelian; Udine, Museum: Consilium in arena (in collaboration with Domenico), 1748-50; Venice, Accademia: four canvases with mythological subjects, ca. 1720-22; Transport of the Holy House of Loreto, sketch for the Scalzi, 1743; Invention of the Cross, formerly in the church of the Cappuccine; Querini-Stampalia Gallery: Portrait of the Procurator Querini; church of the Gesuati: Madonna and Three Saints; church of S. Stae: Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, ca. 1721; Doge's Palace: Neptune Offers to Venice the Gifts of the Sea; Vicenza, Pinacoteca: Immaculate Conception, Allegory of Fame (from the Villa Cordellina), Time Discovering Truth; Vienna, Academy: Phaethon and Apollo, sketch for the Palazzo Clerici in Milan, 1731; Washington, National Gallery: Timoclea and the Commander (formerly in the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice), Apollo and Daphne; Apotheosis of Spain, 1762, sketch for Madrid; Würzburg, University: Family of Darius and Mucius Scaevola.
T.'s importance in the art of the European eighteenth century was great: not only in Italy did he have numerous pupils and imitators, but also in southern Germany and Austria, and even in Spain, if one thinks of Goya, who certainly saw his works and admired his Capricci and Scherzi di fantasia. Neoclassicism obscured T.'s fame, but only for a short time; because it was reborn with the romanticism of Delacroix and above all with the impressionists who saw in T.'s luminosities, in the whimsical darting of his improvisations, a precedent among the most lively and brilliant. And the judgment of Berenson (1894) is still valid: "T. does not seem the last of the great masters, so much as the first of the new; the works he left in Spain largely explain to us the Spanish pictorial rebirth of Goya; who, in turn, had great influence on many of the best modern Frenchmen."
The art criticism of recent decades has rediscovered a new chapter on T.'s youth, has clarified the chronology of his works, has distinguished the part played by his son Domenico, and has brought to light the highly interesting pictorial personality of the latter.
Bibliography18 works
GIAN DOMENICO
Painter, born in Venice on 30 Aug. 1727 and died there on 3 March 1804. He was educated in art by his father Giovanni Battista, and was his most faithful collaborator until the latter's death.
Today, unlike in the past, a clearly identifiable personality is recognized in D., one that at a certain point succeeds in achieving a more popular kind of painting, directed at the changed taste of the times and, one might even say, less aristocratic than that of his father. He soon showed his sympathy for the illustrative, or genre, current of Venetian painting; but in his collaboration with his father he had to submit to translating into fresco (and more rarely, onto canvas) the latter's cartoons or "modelletti". From as early as the Würzburg period, at the age of twenty-three, he created works in which his pungent modern inspiration is already evident; thus at the Villa Valmarana; thus in the Spanish period; and above all after his parent's death. Endowed with inexhaustible inventive spirit, his engravings and his hundreds upon hundreds of drawings, in which he is at times sarcastic or dramatic, or simply fanciful, would suffice to make him a figure of singular prominence. After his stays in Germany (1751-53) and in Spain (1762-70) he settled in Venice; in 1783 he was called to Genoa to fresco the ceiling of the Doge's Palace; then he returned to his native city and remained there until his death.
Shortly after 1745 he frescoed in Brescia in the church of Sts. Faustino and Giovita and in the nearby Canonica; in '47 he supplied for the church of S. Polo in Venice fourteen stations of the Via Crucis; in '49 he painted in the Villa of Zianigo (where he would fresco again in 1771, 1791 and '93); at Würzburg he supplied three overdoors for the Residenz; in 1757 he signed and dated the carnival scenes in the Foresteria of the Villa Valmarana at Vicenza, where he decorated other rooms; in 1759 he frescoed in Udine the monochrome frieze in the church of the Purità; he is mentioned in the Fraglia pittorica in 1761 and in 1775; on 20 Oct. 1776 in Venice he married Margherita Moscheni, by whom he had two children; from 1780 to '83 he was President of the Academy.
The study of the artistic development of G. Domenico T. has been distorted by the erroneous reading of the date of the paintings of the Villa Valmarana, held to be 1737 rather than 1757. But already in the scenes of the Via Crucis the differences of style between his works and those of his father appear identifiable in a greater crowding of the figures, in a certain disproportion between the foreground figures and the secondary ones, in the slightly tart taste of the color, in the repetition of certain types (boys with protruding ears, broad faces, etc.) as well as in the more tremulous and nervous line. However, the distinction is not always easy, since at times Domenico sought to imitate his father's manner to the point of implausibility. In the carnival scenes of the Valmarana his predilections are by now declared; and likewise in various pleasing scenes of the other rooms of that Foresteria, where the artist expresses himself with brisk and fresh inventions drawn from the customs of the time. There is no doubt that this was his path: and the scenes of the Balletti, of the Ciarlatani, etc., in the Louvre, or in the Museum of Barcelona (formerly in the Palazzo Papadopoli in Venice), or finally those of the Blake collection now in Kansas City (U.S.A.), suffice to prove it. He perfected this taste also during his Spanish sojourn, where he painted, among other things, the unforgettable (signed) scene of the Partenza della gondola, belonging to the collection of the Count of Quintanilla (formerly Torrecilla) in Madrid; a scene that pairs with the Burchiello (initialed) of the Museum of Vienna. In this field he was a master; and he fell short instead in the great elaborate decorations, as he fell short in Genoa in the ceiling of the Palazzo Ducale (1783), where he repeated his father's formulas without enthusiasm and crowding them beyond measure. A draughtsman and engraver of extraordinary vivacity, D. made his mark very young with the series of his Idee pittoresche sopra la Fuga in Egitto, published in 1753; he engraved many of his father's paintings and frescoes; he published the Raccolta di Teste. In his last years he devoted himself particularly to drawing; he imagined the life and death of Pulcinella in a series of fanciful sheets entitled Divertimenti per li ragazzi - carte 104; he sketched rapid caricatures of the life of his times, with a sarcastic and biting flavor like that of a Hogarth or a Rowlandson.
Principal works (besides those mentioned above): Bassano, Museo: Madonna col Bambino; Detroit, Institute of Arts: Alessandro e le figlie di Dario; Florence, Uffizi: Paggio, Dama con ventaglio (attributed to Longhi); Museo Stibbert: Battesimo di Cristo; Frankfurt, Staedel Institute: Generosità di Scipione; Hartford (U.S.A.), Wadsworth Atheneum: Ultima Cena; London, National Gallery: Il cavallo di Troia (two sketches); Los Angeles, Loewi coll.: Cristo risana il cieco, 1752; Lugano, Thyssen coll.: Trionfo d'Ercole; Madrid, Royal Palace: Apoteosi della Spagna, fresco in the ceiling of the first room of the Anticamera de la Reyna; Mainz, Museum: Accampamento; Merlengo, parish church: S. Osvaldo; New York, Metropolitan Museum: Bozzetto for the ceiling of the Palazzo Ducale of Genoa; formerly Wildenstein coll.: I cani sapienti, Minuetto; Padua, S. Agnese: Madonna e Santi, 1777;
Cathedral: Madonna e s. Filippo Neri, Madonna e s. Gerolamo Emiliani, 1778: Paris, Louvre, Bozzetto for ceiling; Rome, Albertini coll.: Nascita della Vergine, Presentazione al tempio; Carandini-Albertini coll.: l'Arrivo di Abramo e di Lot, La separazione di Abramo e di Lot (ca. 1752-53); Schleissheim, Gallery: Cristo nella casa di Simone, Ultima Cena, 1752; Stockholm, Museum: Adorazione dei pastori, 1754, Presentazione al tempio; Venice, Accademia: Abramo e gli angeli, S. Francesco da Paola, Miracolo dell'indemoniato, 1748; Ca' Rezzonico: frescoes detached from the villa T.; Verona, Museo civico: I Santi Olivetani (from Murano).