Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Born in Venice on 5 March 1696, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo entered a city still gilded by its painting tradition but already slipping from power. Success came early; he built a career not just across Italy but in Germany and Spain, carrying the Rococo style's airy drama to palaces and churches that wanted grandeur without weight. He worked alongside Pittoni, Canaletto, Piazzetta, Crespi, and Guardi—the last generation later called Old Masters of the Venetian school. Michael Levey would call him "the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman," a…