page_title: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
section_title: Madrid
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo / Biography / Madrid
context_page_description: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. He was prolific, and worked not only in Italy, but also in Germany and Spain.
  Giovan Battista Tiepolo, together with Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Francesco Guardi are considered the traditional Old Masters of that period.
  Successful from the beginning of his career, he has been described by Michael Levey as "the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman."
context_section_description: In 1761, Charles III commissioned Tiepolo to create a ceiling fresco to decorate the throne room of the Royal Palace of Madrid. The panegyric theme is the Apotheosis of Spain and has allegorical depictions recalling the dominance of Spain in the Americas and across the globe.
  He also painted two other ceilings in the palace, and carried out many private commissions in Spain.However he suffered from  the jealousy and the bitter opposition of the rising champion of Neoclassicism, Anton Raphael Mengs; at the instigation of Mengs' supporter, the King's confessor Joaquim de Electa, had Tiepolo's series of canvases for the church of S. Pascual at Aranjuez replaced by works by his favourite.
  Tiepolo died in Madrid on March 27, 1770.
  After his death, the rise of a stern Neoclassicism and the post-revolutionary decline of absolutism led to the slow decline of the Rococo style associated with his name, but failed to dent his reputation. In 1772, Tiepolo's son was sufficiently respected to be  painter to Doge Giovanni II Cornaro, in charge of the decoration of Palazzo Mocenigo in the sestiere of San Polo, Venice.
caption: Apollo Pursuing Daphne, 1755–1760
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