Modernity without a Future. Tiepolo and the Painterly Enlightenment

• Applicant: Dr. Alexander Linke
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397818037

The lopsided perception of Giambattista Tiepolo as a court artist, who deliberately supports the aristocratic needs for representation with monumental decorations of Venetian palaces and villas, has blindsided art historians for the innovative and enlightened tendencies of his art. In fact, also the contacts of his Italian patrons to a prominent literary society, the Academy of the Arcadians, have been widely underestimated. However, the focus of this >Republic of letters< (among its members such distinguished intellectuals as Muratori, Vico, and Maffei) has been to develop aesthetic theories as guiding principles for social reform. The project aims to reconstruct the aesthetic postulates central to the Arcadia (namely the buon gusto, the sublime and the epistemological concept of the imagination) and to demonstrate their relevance to the visual culture of Venice, especially in regards to the production and perception of Tiepolo’s imagery. Accordingly, the objective of this project is to analyze the monumental fresco decorations of Giambattista Tiepolo within the framework of Italian Enlightenment and thus strive to present a fresh recognition of one of the great painters of the century. The project bids for the first comprehensive study of the waning days of aristocratic patronage in terms of large-scale fresco decorations, focusing a time of transition between late phase of the Baroque and – looking forward to Neo-classicism and Romanticism – the genesis of Modernity. Furthermore, the project provides an in-depth analysis of Tiepolo’s major art works, focusing on how the artist deals with the new aesthetics in terms of conceptualizing and designing his imagery and, as a matter of fact, adapts the primarily poetological concepts for the visual arts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants