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| Giambattista Tiepolo Angelic Musicians and Putti around Altar 1726 fresco Duomo di Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Sarah and the Angel 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
"Among Tiepolo scholars it has become traditional to talk of his 'traveling company' with the slightly knowing air of one who knows the secrets of the game. The point is undeniable, because it alludes to the theatrical nature of all that happens in Tiepolo. But it also conceals something misleading: that company of players who went from square to square, prepared to stage sacred or profane shows, depending on the audience, is at the same time a tribe, ethnically distinct from that which surrounds it. Tiepolo's characters form a parallel world, with its own customs and conventions. Decorations, colors, and headgear do not correspond only to the history of previous painting (epitomized by Veronese) and to the expectations of patrons, but to an internal code, as at the court of Heian Japan or among the Kwakiutl of the American Northwest. If one does not see that code, Tiepolo's painting is unjustly confused with the air of his day. If one does see it, it is the chronicle of the eighteenth century that is absorbed and vaporized in the air of Tiepolo."
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Sacrifice of Isaac 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Hagar and Ishmael with Angel 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Prophet Isaiah with Angel 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Jacob's Dream 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Jacob wrestling with the Angel 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Jacob reconciled with Esau 1726-29 fresco Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Bellerophon on Pegasus 1743-50 fresco Ballroom, Palazzo Labia, Venice |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Bellerophon on Pegasus (detail with receding obelisk) 1743-50 fresco Ballroom, Palazzo Labia, Venice |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Glory among the Cardinal Virtues (detail) 1734 fresco Villa Loschi, Biron di Monteviale |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Glory among the Cardinal Virtues (detail) 1734 fresco Villa Loschi, Biron di Monteviale |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo The Banquet of Cleopatra (detail with serving men before a display of plate) 1743-50 fresco Ballroom, Palazzo Labia, Venice |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo The Banquet of Cleopatra (detail with ladies of the court) 1743-50 fresco Ballroom, Palazzo Labia, Venice |
"A myth is the mesh of a spider's web, and not a dictionary entry," Marcel Mauss once said. Tiepolo treated the stories his patrons asked him to translate into images in the same way. Christian or pagan – it was indifferent. Real or fictitious, at a certain point all events had to be transformed into the threads of that spider's web, hanging between the branches of a slanted tree trunk and swaying gently at every puff of wind. Never had it been possible to move around in the past with such agility, as if distances in time and space were rhetorical arguments that facilitated contact rather than hindered it. The exotic, as such, no longer existed. All was exotic – or nothing."
– quoted passages are from Tiepolo Pink by Roberto Calasso, translated by Alastair McEwen (Knopf, 2009)