“His Lyre Is Now Attuned Only to Woe”

“D and fables I fashion,” wrote 18th-century Italian poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, “and even while I sketch elaborate fables and dreams upon paper ... I so enter into them that I weep and am offended at ills I invented” (1). Metastasio might have been describing the work of his contemporary Giambattista Tiepolo, whose art blended history, mythology, legend, and scripture in a grand manner. His frescoes, which graced the palaces and princely courts of Europe, embodied the notion popular in his day that painting, like theater and opera, was staged fi ction and should engage the viewer on an imaginary level (2). Tiepolo was born in Venice, itself a fanciful and theatrical city of canals, lagoons, piazzas, and palaces, the center of artistic splendor, even during its decline in the 18th century. From a family of painters, draftsmen, and etchers, he was apprenticed as a youth to academic master Gregorio Lazzarini. He married Maria Cecilia, sister of painters Gianantonio and Francesco Guardi, and by age 21, he was an established painter too. He had nine children. Two followed in their father’s footsteps and became his assistants; one, Domenico, became a great artist in his own right (3). Tiepolo was infl uenced by the work of 16th-century master Paolo Veronese, particularly in his use of sumptuous often anachronistic costumes, and was often called Veronese redivivus (a new Veronese) (4). He learned eloquence and drama from Titian and Tintoretto and admired the work of his contemporary Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. His education was complex and varied, enriched by his circle of friends, patrons, collectors, and connoisseurs of the stage and its extravagance, among them cosmopolitan courtier and art critic Francesco Algarotti, who wrote a treatise on opera. Extremely versatile, Tiepolo mastered multiple artistic forms and media (etchings, watercolors, oils) and made brilliant use of chiaroscuro―use of light and dark to create depth. He produced altarpieces as well as portraits and