Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1696-1770 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born in Venice on March 5, 1696. His father, who was part owner of a ship, died when Tiepolo was scarcely a year old, but the family was left in comfortable circumstances. As a youth, he was apprenticed to Gregorio Lazzarini, a mediocre but fashionable painter known for his elaborately theatrical, rather grandiose compositions. Tiepolo soon evolved a more spirited style of his own. By the time he was 20, he had exhibited his work independently, and won plaudits, at an exhibition held at the church of S. Rocco. The next year he became a member of the Fraglia, or painters guild. In 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, whose brother Francesco was to become famous as a painter of the Venetian scene. They had nine children, among them Giovanni Domenico and Lorenzo Baldassare, who were also painters. In the 1720s Tiepolo carried out many large-scale commissions on the northern Italian mainland. Of these the most important is the cycle of Old Testament scenes done for the patriarch of Aquileia, Daniele Dolfin, in the new Archbishop Palace at Udine. Here Tiepolo abandoned the dark hues that had characterized his early style and turned instead to the bright, sparkling colors that were to make him famous.
The Scourge of the Serpents
The Scourge of the Serpents (detail) 1732-35 Oil on canvas, 164 x 1356 cm (complete frieze) Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice During the 1720s Giambattista Tiepolo developed a new colouristic style of painting derived in principle from the dazzling palette of Veronese and the no less brilliant one of Sebastiano Ricci. Rejecting the tenebrous colour of Piazzetta, we witness in Tiepolo the triumph of colour with a richness of resonance and counterpoint elaborated within the ordered and monumental composition. The great frieze, originally below the choir of the Venetian church of SS. Cosma and Damiani on the Giudecca (Zanetti 1771), is a fine example of Tiepolo's work of the 1730s. The painting in its ornate stucco frame decorated with fruit, flowers and leaves is over 13 metres long. Three episodes are depicted with a decorative illusionism contrasting with the declared realist-narrative intent, rendering the painting somewhat melodramatic effect.Artist:TIEPOLO, Giovanni Battista Title: The Scourge of the Serpents (detail) Painted in 1701-1750 , Italian - - painting : religious