Drawings: Giambattista Tiepolo

In this FULL VERSION, you will find over 90 drawings by the great master Giambattista Tiepolo. Enjoy the high quality images of his drawings, share them with your friends via email, and learn about the artist life.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice. He was prolific, and worked in Italy, Germany and Spain.
He is principally known for his fresco work, particularly his panegyric ceilings. These followed the Baroque tradition begun a century before by Pietro da Cortona, converting roof to painted sky, elevating petty aristocrats to divine status, and allowing for vast compositions that merged with the delicate ornamentation of the stucco frames. His palette was almost water-color like and he was very prolific. While his painting is infused with the Venetian spirit, his luminosity is not seen in the previous masters and he is considered the last "Olympian" painter of the Venetian Republic.

His drawings were greatly admired in his lifetime, as attested by contemporary accounts. Tiepolo created a large number of vibrant pen and wash studies that are among the archetypal drawings of the Venetian Settecento. Tiepolo enjoyed drawing as an additional means of expression. He did not draw simply to make an immediate note of his ideas, but also to give the freest, most complete expression to his genius. His drawings constitute an enormous part of his work, giving expression to a quite extraordinary imagination; his drawings include compositional studies for paintings and prints, drawings of heads, figure studies for large-scale decorations, landscapes and caricatures, as well as several series of drawings on such themes as the Holy Family.