Two Allegorical Figures for a Ceiling
Medium
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk
Dimensions
11 7/8 x 10 1/16 in. (30.2 x 25.5 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Robert Lehman Collection
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number
1975.1.446
Tags
Art Historical Context
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, master of the Venetian Rococo style, created *Two Allegorical Figures for Ceiling* in 173 as a preparatory drawing for grand decorative schemes. At just 11 7/8 x 10 1/16 inches, this intimate sketch captures the artist's vision for illusionistic ceiling frescoes, a hallmark of 18th-century European palaces and churches. Tiepolo, renowned for his sweeping fresco cycles in Venice and beyond, often depicted ethereal figures personifying virtues, the arts, or mythological themes—here suggesting dynamic groupings of men, women, and children in flowing poses. Executed in ...
About the Artist
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · 1696–1770
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) stands as the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, a Venetian master whose luminous frescoes and dynamic compositions defined the Rococo era's aesthetic zenith. Born in Venice on March 5, 1696, to a modest shipping merchant family, Tiepolo's extraordinary talent transcended his humble origins to establish him as the most sought-after artis...