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| Giambattista Tiepolo Zenobia before Aurelian c. 1717 oil on canvas Prado |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Cherub with flower wreath c. 1767-69 oil on canvas Prado |
Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) spent the last several years of his life in Spain at the court of Charles III. As Francis Haskell writes in Patrons and Painters, "Tiepolo was indeed outstanding in his day in that almost alone, quite wholeheartedly and without a tremor of doubt, he really believed in the Venetian ancien regime. It is surprising that the State failed to make more use of him beyond driving him against his will to Madrid as a gesture of appeasement towards Spain."
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| Giambattista Tiepolo cartoon for The Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy 1760s oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum |
"Tiepolo himself deliberately aimed at a special class of patron. He used to say that 'painters must try and succeed in large-scale works capable of pleasing the rich and the nobility because it is they who make the fortunes of artists and not the other sort of people, who cannot buy valuable pictures. And so a painter's spirit must always be reaching out for the sublime, the heroic, the perfect.'"
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| Giandomenico Tessari after Giambattista Tiepolo Woman with parrot 1740s etching British Museum |
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| Matthias Oesterreich after Giambattista Tiepolo Io, messenger of the Gods 1745 etching British Museum |
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| after Giambattista Tiepolo Figure study mid-18th century engraving British Museum |
"Present-day taste finds the artist's bozzetti more appealing and, attracted by the general glamour of 'rococo' art, fails to grasp the grandeur and megalomania of Tiepolo's full-scale decorations. There is reason to believe that painters like Fragonard and some connoisseurs of the time may have made the same distinction. But admiration for Tiepolo's marvelous color and fantasy should not blind us to his moral commitment to the cause he was serving any more than it does in the case of Rubens."
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Nereids & Triton c. 1753-62 drawing British Museum |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Neptune seated on a cloud c. 1740 drawing British Museum |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Man wearing overcoat 1750s drawing Getty |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Figure with long hair, from behind c. 1754-62 drawing British Museum |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Wall with gateway c. 1757 drawing British Museum |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo The Horses of the Sun 1719 fresco Villa Baglioni, Massanzago |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Fall of Phaethon 1719 fresco Villa Baglioni, Massanzago |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo The Triumph of Eloquence ca. 1724 ceiling fresco Palazzo Sandi, Venice |