Tiepolo, the ‘Best Painter in Venice’, Goes on View in Germany in a Blockbuster Show

There are several contenders to be Venice’s greatest artist, but
a major German art museum is in no doubt about who should take the
top spot. The State Gallery in Stuttgart has organized an Old
Master show boldly titled “The Best Painter in Venice.” Forget
Titian or Veronese, Tiepolo deserves the prize, according to the
exhibition’s curators.

Undeniably one of Venice’s art stars, the survey, which features
120 works by  Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, opened on Friday,
October 11, in the country where the prolific artist flourished in
the 18th century.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the Italian artist’s death,
curators have gathered together 25 of his best-known paintings as
well as 50 drawings, plus etchings, caricature sketches, and nude
studies. The blockbuster exhibition features loans from the
Accademia in Venice, the Louvre in Paris, New York’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest.

“In all his splendor, he begins to question the Baroque art
system. And he makes use of a subtle joke,” curator Annette Hojer
told the German news agency DPA. “The exhibition
looks at Tiepolo as a painter at a turning point in the times,” she
added. He worked for princes and the church, but he recognized that
the system of patronage that had served Western artists for
centuries was drawing to a close, she explained.

Born in Venice in 1696, Tiepolo created imaginative and
vibrantly-colored frescoes and paintings that made him one of the
most in-demand artists of his day. He spent a significant and
productive time in the south German city of Würzburg (about two
hours from Stuttgart), where he made his largest frescoes. France
beckoned, and eventually Spain. He died in Madrid, aged
74, summoned there to undertake several major commissions,
including painting ceilings of the Palacio Real.

See works from the exhibition below.

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