Monday, April 25, 2022

Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) - Clarity and Snap

Giambattista Tiepolo
Armida encounters the sleeping Rinaldo (detail)
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Armida encounters the sleeping Rinaldo (detail)
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Armida encounters the sleeping Rinaldo, with Venus presiding
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Rinaldo and Armida in her Garden
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Rinaldo and Armida in her Garden (detail)
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Rinaldo and Armida in her Garden (detail)
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Rinaldo and the Magus of Ascalon
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Rinaldo and the Magus of Ascalon (detail)
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1742-45
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giambattista Tiepolo
Sacrifice of Iphigenia
ca. 1747-50
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Giambattista Tiepolo
Sacrifice of Iphigenia 
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Giambattista Tiepolo
Flight into Egypt in a Boat guided by Angels
ca. 1765-70
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

Giambattista Tiepolo
Martyrdom of St Sebastian
1739
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Giambattista Tiepolo
Miracle of the Bronze Serpent (detail)
1731-32
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

"A finished picture by Tiepolo, an altarpiece or fresco, exhibits the process of its making, as do the pictures of many painters.  But it does not do so by displaying underdrawing, or corrections, or even very assertive brush strokes.  Rather, an earlier process has been internalized into the finished forms of the figures and other objects – but particularly the human figures – that he represents: their forms declare that process.  Again, this must be so of the pictures of many painters.  But Tiepolo's manner is unusual for the peculiar clarity and snap with which it exhibits the muscular differentiation underlying itself.  His figures act out his creative process in the shape they have taken; and this displaced performance of self feeds an idiosyncratic vitality into his depiction of the human predicament . . ."

"One positive result of having been, relatively speaking, out of public view, is that Tiepolo's painting has remained exceptionally free of the interference of later art as well as of the tradition of critical writing.  It is hard, perhaps impossible even, not to see canonical works in the tradition through the eyes of the artists that came after: we see Cézanne, for example, through cubist eyes.  Tradition keeps earlier art alive, but in doing so, transforms it.  This does not obtain with Tiepolo.  His painting retains its original freshness.  And rarely has the pictorial enterprise been so single-mindedly pursued."

– from Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall (Yale University Press, 1994)

Giambattista Tiepolo
Apotheosis of St Dominic
1723
oil on canvas
(modello for ceiling fresco)
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Giambattista Tiepolo
The Holy House transported by Angels from the Holy Land to Loreto
1743
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice