Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: 12 works

'Born and trained in Venice, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo enjoyed an illustrious career as an eighteenth-century Baroque painter.'

'This is a subject that reappears with a certain frequency in Tiepolo's work and critics are divided as regards the authenticity of the different versions.'

'Giovanni Battista Tiepolo interpreted the scene with the nautical expertise of a painter born and raised in Venice. He chose a flat-bottomed vessel not unlike the gondolas that still ply the waters of his native city.'

'Tiepolo produced more than twenty punchinello drawings, and they were most likely made as independent works for collectors rather than studies for paintings or prints.'

'Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted this episode at least three times. For this, the third rendering, he adopted a classicizing style in which antique architectural elements and relief sculptures evoke a sumptuous palace setting.'

'The nimble brushwork seen in the eagle wings and clothing of the helmeted figure is typical of Tiepolo's work and is one of the most appealing aspects of Tiepolo's small format works.'

'A preparatory sketch or modello for Tiepolo's ceiling in the Villa Cordellina near Vicenza, where the artist worked in 1743-44.'

'Giovanni Battista Tiepolo also provided smaller decorative panels and a ceiling painting for what must have been a sparkling, light-filled room.'

'The painting is a sketch for various larger compositions painted by Tiepolo at different times on the ceilings of villas and private residences.'

'Unable to restore Hyacinth to life, Apollo decided to immortalise him by turning him into a flower which Tiepolo arranges in a beautiful clump next to the tennis racquet on the viewer's right.'

'With animated strokes, Tiepolo applied red and white chalk to blue paper, a technique favored by Venetian artists for its striking contrast. Dark red strokes define the model's facial features, including a gap between his front teeth; velvety red chalk softens the outlines and contours of his face.'

'Working two hundred years after Da Vinci, Tiepolo drew caricatures like this funny-looking man in addition to the serious subjects for which he is known. He made these drawings as independent works of art, sometimes for his own amusement.'