page_title: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
section_title: Etchings
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo / Biography / Etchings
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: Tiepolo produced two sets of etchings, the Capricci (c. 1740–1742) and the Scherzi di  fantasia (c. 1743–1757). The ten capricci were first published by Anton Maria Zanetti, incorporated into the third edition of  a  compilation  of woodcuts after Parmigiano. They were not published separately until 1785. The subject matter is often bizarre and fantastical, and the works owe a lot to the example of Salvator Rosa and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. The 23 Scherzi were etched over more than ten years and privately circulated, only being commercially published after Tiepolo's death, with numbers and titles added by his son, Giandomenico. Subjects include  mysterious Eastern figures, and, in  some of the later prints, scenes of necromancy.
caption: Apotheosis of Spain (1762-1766) in Royal Palace of Madrid.
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