Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
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. Related Paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo :. | Boy Holding a Book | The Capture of Carchage | Abraham and Angels | Rinaldo Abandoning Armida | Sarah and the Archangel | Related Artists: Paul BrilFlemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1554-1626
Paul (1554-1626) and Mattheus (1550-1583) Brill (or Bril) were brothers, both born in Antwerp, who were landscape painters who worked in Rome after earning papal favor. They are also described as painters of capricci (whims or fancies) or vedute ideate or veduta di fantasia, with typical rustic hills with a few ruins. Mattheus began work on several frescoes in Rome from 1570 onwards, and his work includes the Vatican Seasons. Mattheus died young, and his brother continued his work around 1574. Paul painted frescoes such as the landscapes in the Casino Rospigliosi (Rome), and The Roman Forum, which showed this site for what it had become: a slum for squatters and pasture for livestock (so much so that the place was nicknamed Campo Vaccino, or The Cowfield). His masterpiece may be a fresco in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican.
Paul also did engravings and small cabinet paintings on copper, some of which are signed with a pair of spectacles (a pun on the French word brilles, spectacles). Some of these were collaborations with Johann Rottenhammer, who according to a dealer letter of 1617 painted the figures in Venice and then sent the plates to Rome for Bril to complete the landscape. He collaborated with his friend Adam Elsheimer, who he both influenced and was influenced by, on one painting (now Chatsworth House) Joseph Chelmonski1850-1914
Kate Elizabeth BunceEnglish Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1856-1927
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