Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Italian, 1727–1804

BiographyBorn in Venice on 30 August 1727, Giovanni Domenico Maria Antonio Tiepolo was the fifth child and oldest surviving son of the prodigious Baroque painter Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo (1696-1770). Domenico trained in the Tiepolo workshop during the 1740s, where he drew copies of drawings and paintings by his father and others, and served as assistant on major commissions of the shop. His first independent work was a series of twenty-four canvases for the Oratory of the Crucifixion of San Polo, Venice (1747-49). During these years, he also developed as a master etcher (seem AMAM invs. 41.12 and 72.96).

From 1750-53 Domenico, along with his brother Lorenzo (1736-1772), helped his father complete commissioned frescoes in Würzburg at the Residenz of the prince-bishop Carl Philipp van Greiffenclau. In this project his work blended almost imperceptibly with that of his father, but he also produced independent canvases for private patrons and many drawings. Domenico also created a well-known series of etchings imaginatively illustrating the Flight into Egypt (see AMAM 72.96). In 1753 the three Tiepolos returned to Venice. Domenico continued to collaborate with his father, and emerged as the family specialist in monochrome frescoes and genre painting. Domenico's appreciation of the "theater" of contemporary Venetian life is revealed in frescoes in buildings in and around Venice (for example, at the Villa Valmarana ai Nani, outside Vicenza, and at the Tiepolo family villa at Zianigo, near Mirano), and in several easel paintings of this period.

In 1762 Giambattista was called to Spain to work for Charles III, again accompanied by and relying heavily on his sons. Returning to Venice after his father's death in 1770, Domenico continued to paint, make prints, and draw prolifically. The late drawings were executed in several lengthy series, or variations on a theme, devoted to religious, mythological and exotic subjects; Venetian contemporary life; and Punchinello, the artist's final and crowning achievement.

Domenico died of fever in Venice on 4 March 1804.