Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
- 2 min read
- 3 chapters
Explore on Lably
ToursExplore Lably’s 3D toursLife history
Domenico was born in Venice, studied under his father, and by the age of 13 was the elder Tiepolo's chief assistant. He was one of the many assistants, including his brother Lorenzo, who transferred the designs of his father (often executed in 'oil sketches). By the age of 20, he was producing his own work for commissioners.
He assisted his father in Würzburg 1751–3, decorating the famous stairwell fresco, in Vicenza at the Villa Valmarana ai Nani in 1757, and at the Royal Palace of Madrid for Charles III of Spain from 1762 to 1770.
Sign in to keep reading
2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Drawings and prints
Many of Domenico's works are drawings with ink wash, and he was a fine draftsman, although weaker than his father. His St. Ambrose Addressing the Young St. Augustine sketch is typical of the commissions he would receive. St. Ambrose, with the crozier and mitre, addresses and gives religious instruction to the beardless Saint Augustine. The composition has the pomp and grandiosity of his father's work, set out as if part of a theatrical display. He, however, took 18th-century Venice as the setting for this 4th-century act, drawing on his experience of the city and his many works depicting life in it.
Domenico was also a significant printmaker in etching, often reproducing his own or his father's paintings. But his original compositions include a series of twenty-four illustrations of the Idee Pittoresche sulla Fuga in Egitto ("Picturesque Scenes from the Flight into Egypt"), and one of the fourteen Stations of the Cross.
Collections
The Prado Museum, The Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), the Blanton Museum of Art (University of Texas, Austin), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Finnish National Gallery, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Indiana University Art Museum, Kunst Indeks Danmark, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, the Musée du Louvre (Paris), Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Barcelona), the National Gallery (London), the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Milan), Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), the Portland Art Museum, the Lázaro Galdiano Museum (Madrid), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Seattle Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Madrid), the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Rosen House at Caramooor Center for Music & the Arts, are among the public collections holding paintings by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo.