ART HISTORY & DRAWING: 15 MINUTES with TIEPOLO

Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to the Drawing Database. It's Professor Mark Leone, and today we're gonna look at the drawings of Giovanni, and this is really important. The middle name is Battista, Battista Tiepolo, Italian, late Baroque or Rococo artist, painter, and there is another Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, but we're gonna look at Giovanni Battista, so make sure that you understand that. I'll write down that middle name down here, B-A, I believe, T-T-I-S-T-A, Giovanni Battista. 1696, he was born in Venice and died in Madrid in 1770, 1770, so pretty long life at that time, and I'm excited to show you the work of his drawings. So let's dig in here and take a look at what we're looking at, and some of my favorite works by Tiepolo's drawings. He did very involved murals and large paintings, commissions for government and wealthy benefactors, and did quite a bit of paintings where figures were floating in the air, and we had a worm's eye view looking up, but one of the things I wanna show you about his drawings I think is important is how sketchy and loose they are. Very free in that sense, seemingly almost effortless. Take a look at the nose, how effortless that reads, but reads quite nicely. Good edge control, obviously, with the outer edges, lots of variation in contour, line, width, length, darkness, and lightness too as well, but he also has this technique, and it's starting to begin to be a good example here of this blended technique where he takes the tone of the shadow area, and then he adds these very quick contoured hatched marks on top of it. So you're gonna see a lot of this with Battista Tiepolo. You're gonna see a lot of this blended kind of tone, right, and something maybe like that, kind of a softer tone, right, and then right on top of that will be these nice hatched marks. You won't see it the opposite way. You'll see this quite a bit in Renaissance drawing, Baroque, Classical, I don't like saying Classical so much because it sounds like you're really referring to Neoclassical, but we'll see this smudged blended tone put down first to get the values and the softness, and then these cross-hatched, counter-contouring, cross-contouring lines to give us direction, and we see that all over Tiepolo's, Battista Tiepolo's beautiful drawings. Let's go on to the next one. Here we see a lovely study of a male back, and I remember as a student looking at Robert Beverly Hale's books, Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters and Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters in Terms of Anatomy, and this was one that would pop up quite a bit, and I just love the looseness of it, the freshness of this kind of almost wild hair that he has going on with the model, and I remember just at that time how difficult backs, you know, backs could be to draw, and let's take a look. Let me blow this up a little bit further. I'll take the navigator here, and so we can just go a little bit big, but bigger, and notice that this is the control, the anatomy of the back, the scapula, and through this region, you know, light source coming over here, popping down on the model, but here again, and this is a great technical thing you might wanna start getting in your works, but starting out by once you've got your shadow shapes located, putting in a softer tone, an overall value tone for the shadow, and I'm talking about right in through here, that middle tone value, right? So he's got that blended, you know, lay-in of the shadow, correct? And then on top of that, then of course we see that beautiful and wonderful, you know, cross-contouring, that darker line that he utilizes, and we see it all over the inside of the forearm here, along the elbows, but certainly along the back and through here, the divot of the spine down by the erector spinae. Look how he splits the buttock into there, that beautiful little dart. It's almost effortless. The stroking pattern technique is very important. He gets this rounded contouring with that feeling of the cylinder in through there, but again, he gets an economy of means to get this drawing working and finished, but with a very loose approach, and then he pulls it all together by throwing in the core shadows and then using cross-contour lines for those core shadows. They get quite a bit dark, and of course they tell the story of rounding, like these ones in here, right? Really rounding and turning out that back quite nicely. So another beautiful, I think quite lovely study by Batista Tiepolo. Let's go on to the next one. Also some of my favorite works in drawing of his is his beautiful control of a quick pen and ink contour line, as you see, with the contouring of the outside of the forearms, and then using about three values. We've got this sort of lighter value here, the kind of the almost white of the paper, a little darker value kind of in the neck and in the cloth here and here, and then that darkest value right in there, right? So three values. We've got kind of the light of the paper, a slight middle tone, a little bit darker, and then a little bit dark, so maybe three, maybe four, actually, to get that working, and you see kind of a signature soft brush inky technique that he uses to lay in with the brush the work. Of course, the ink was not water-soluble, so it's gonna stay put, but notice how it's very almost effortless. The lines, see how they fade off? You have the calf, it fades off a little bit, and we get to the ankle. Beautiful control of the foreshortened foot, right? Foreshortened hand in there, the head, and here's a good study of where we're looking up to the figures here down from below. So he did quite a bit of paintings and frescoes where we had that worm's eye view. We're looking up to the model, quite fascinating, and difficult to pull off. Beautiful tip look. So again, we see that technique where the study of a young man or young boy, his head, light source coming from the top left, and through here, we obviously see the highlight, but what's most important is once the linear elements of the drawing are done, and we still see some in the right, the head of the model and through here, the wrist, the hands, we see some beautiful Conte crayon type line work, and then the smudged or blended value tone. So this, essentially this tone in the head, this middle tone right in through here, right? Probably blended in either with the hand, the finger, or the stump, and then once that was achieved, he comes back with these, again, these beautiful cross-contouring lines. I love this one in the forehead, and it gives it kind of a cohesion and a texture, and there's this kind of almost serrated quality to it that I think is fascinating, and made him unique for that time, and we'll get a little, and it gets a little pixelated, but you get the idea, I think, pretty nice things as we go in. It's a very loose sketch, isn't it? And it certainly tightens up as we get further and further away, but it's classic Tiepolo technique. Another Tiepolo head study. Quite a bit of these are head studies, and we see the lovely expression on the face, the looseness of the quality. It's kind of like a Rococo Santa Claus, if you will. But we see, once the linear elements are laid in of the head structure, right, coming back in space here, chin about right in through there, head coming back over, here's the side plane right in through here, jawline right in through there, he gets this beautiful, lovely tone going in the beard, the side plane of the head, the mustache, this middle tone in through here, and sometimes a little bit lighter. And that's very blended in. Then he really comes back on top of that with this incising line. Notice the line of the nose running through here. That really gives us the hard edge of the nose. All the almost effortlessness of the eyes, the turning up, looking as we look up to them. And then the rendering on the beard is almost nothing there, but just beautiful. Spudged tone, and then line cutting in to give us clarity with edge control. Same thing on the eyes, mouth a little bit, just this few dark lines that separate forms. The underneath of the nose, really beautifully rendered, bulbous part, the cartilage in through here, the alar cartilage on the sides, and up above, middle tone in through there, beautifully rendered, and of course, light source coming from generally top left, so that pushes all this in tonality in through here, right? And then again, those beautiful lines that come on top of it. Probably my favorite study by Tiepolo. This one just kind of hits me. Just a little bit more dramatic in terms of line weights. In contrast of value, you get this beautiful cascading line down from the left. The slightly upward view that we have of the model looking up a little bit, so he's slightly higher than we are. Once he gets the structure of the head in, right, very lightly with light line, then it's blocking in those shadow shapes, which are really kind of in through here, the main part of it, of course, a little bit on the eye, underneath the nose. With that middle tone, probably something right around in through here, middle tone value, then he really pushes down, puts his foot on the pedal of the Conte Crayon chalk and starts to really begin to go into these darks with that beautiful cross-contouring line, almost a zigzag line. Gives that a freshness and a looseness. Beautiful control of the lips and the mouth area. It gives you that really rounded quality that goes right back into his head. You know, we look at the eyes above and then look at the beautiful eye rendering right in through here. If you get the same cross-contouring marks, look at these all over, quite lovely in through there. So, you know, one of my just favorite of all time, Tiepolo's here. Just something, lots of information to look at and to, excuse me, to really learn from and grow from how loose this sketch is. What I like about the sketch is sometimes more than the paintings of the era is just the loose, almost freedom that they have in the paintings. They get, it gets a little bit stiffer and of course more refined. And so it becomes kind of a subjective thing at that point in time. But the drawings are just knockouts. Here we have another loose sketch again with the light source. Now coming from the top right, of course we see the highlights there and then the shadow shapes are to the lower left. This might be on, excuse me, a little toned paper where this paper was naturally a little, kind of this brown tone to start out with up in through here. And so he uses that, lovely, so he can get a lot of mid-tone value in this range, this range, and this range. And then when he's ready to block in shadow shapes, he uses his chamois or he's using his finger or some kind of stump device to block in these shadow shapes over and through here, that middle tone value, and then take, start to push down on that Conte crayon and cut into those edges through here. Right, look at those little areas of darkness where he really cuts in. Let's get a little bit deeper with the mouth. That's just a lovely rendering job and very economical, cutting in with this line through here to really cut into the side of the head. And he goes to the cheekbone down, downward and through and over to the jaw. But you notice that the line weight doesn't stay the same for very long. That's really tough for students to begin to look at. Take a look at the mouth. Look at all the variation of line and separation of forms and softness of the teeth as well as teeth are very softly rendered in there because they're pushed back into the mouth. Just another great gift from Tiepolo. Really another great gift from Tiepolo, male and profile with the light source kind of to his left and certainly to our left and up above a little bit nice. It really lifts all over, even in the light. There's these lighter, almost kind of veiny lines that go through there. But again, we have this egg form, you know, profile head in through, right? Coming over, right, there's the profile of the head, side plane roughly in through there and getting the figures down. And then he blocks in that line really conclusively with that middle tone value probably right here where he starts out with that middle value. So, you know, again, you're laying, you know, the key is laying in this soft sort of middle tone. Here's the abstract idea of it, right? Right in through there. Then you can come back right on top of it and start to add these beautiful cross contour lines and work your edges into that beautiful soft tone and you get that finish that he gets. Just another beautiful rendering. Let's go on to one more. And then lastly, we have this head of a young male, but very difficult shot. Again, we're looking from below, looking up to, we get a little bit under that chin coming up and over. We get this really strong eye turn. We see that classic Tiepolo, very loosely, wildly rendered hair. He's a little bit not as blended with the shadow tone. The shadow tone's kept lighter. So this is where, again, the light source coming up in through here. We get some block in of shadow through there and it's really a little quicker sketch, blended very subtly, even if at all, and then he uses a little bit darker line to come in and cut into those edges. And take a look at the inclusion of that hand and how subtle it is, but how nice and accurate the inclusion of that hand. It's really powerful in through this region, too, as well. So there's Tiepolo for you. I hope you enjoyed that. It's pretty quick, but powerful. If you're interested, go take a look at more of his work. Go take a look at more of his studies and you'll be rewarded with a master for Rococo artist from the Rococo late Baroque era with just killer, excellent draftsmanship and some really complex and interesting spatial arrangements of the painting. So it's Giovanni Battista, Battista Tiepolo. All right, take care. I'll see you next time.