Tiepolo - The Best Painter of Venice

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

11.10.2019 - 2.2.2020

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) was celebrated by his contemporaries as “the best painter of Venice”. Born in Venice, he became one of the most important artists of the eighteenth century – as sought-after in Italy as he was in Würzburg or Madrid. To mark the 250th anniversary of his death, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart put together a major exhibition which showcases the museum’s first-rate holdings of the artist in the wider context of outstanding works drawn from public and private collections in Europe and overseas.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Apelles und Campaspe, um 1725/30, Öl auf Leinwand, 57,4 x 84,2 cm, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Adaline Van Horne Bequest, © Photo MMFA, Christine Guest.

The exhibition is the first in the German-speaking world to focus on Tiepolo’s career in its entirety and to shed light on the diversity of his oeuvre – from elegant paintings with mythological or historical subjects to dramatic religious pictures as well as caricatures, drawings and etchings.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Der heilige Jakobus der Ältere, 1749–50, Öl auf Leinwand, 317 x 163 cm, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, © Szépművészeti Múzeum - Museum of Fine Arts Budapest 2019

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Apollo leads the genius Imperii to the Imperial Bride. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Apollo and Daphne, (ca. 1743/45). Paris, Musée du Louvre, © bpk | RMN – Grand Palais/Franck Raux.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Caricature of a sitting, of the grown man (on the night stool?). National Museums in Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett © bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Jörg P. Anders.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue.