Tiepolo

The catalogue of the exhibition ‘Tiepolo – Venice in the North’ organized by the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery in partnership with the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia MUVE.

The publication with scholarly articles will focus on the art of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) and his son Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804) in a Northern European context. Art works by the famous Venetian masters found their way into major collections in the North all through the 18th and 19th century. The Swedish royal court in Stockholm, the imperial court in St Petersburg and important art collectors contributed to the growing reputation of the Tiepolos far outside the borders of Italy.

The catalogue will present a unique selection of works from major museum collections in Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, Italy and Finland. Masterpieces in oil, sketches, etchings and drawings will cover a wide scope of the artistic production of both the father and the son. The story of how these art works reached the art market far outside Italy is remarkable, and some of the art works have so far remained outside the major field of Tiepolo research. The publication will provide new insights into the history of collections, provenance and the latest research on the art of the Tiepolos.

Between 1774 and 1778, Domenico Tiepolo published the complete production of etchings by the Tiepolo family. A rare and extremely well preserved first edition copy belongs to the National Library of Finland. The catalogue will reveal the fascinating story of this discovery.

Hanna-Leena Paloposki is Senior Researcher at Finnish National Gallery, Finland.