Flying Angels and Putti

Description

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Italian, 1727-1804
Flying Angels and Putti
ca. 1790
Pen and ink and brown wash
Gift of Barbara G. Fleischman, 2008/1.163
The son of the famous Venetian painter, G-B Tiepolo, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo was an accomplished painter and engraver in his own right. Although he and his brother Lorenzo worked with their father on large commissions of both religious and mythological subjects until the elder Tiepolo’s death in 1770, Giovanni Dominico had become an established artist by the age of twenty. Together father and son had worked on numerous projects decorating interiors both in Italy, Spain, and Germany. This study of flying angels and putti demonstrates the bravura and theatricality of the Tiepolos’ style, derived from Rococo painting in Venice. The fluid use of wash to both indicate shadow and define mass is characteristic of Tiepolo’s tremendous draftsmanship.