TIEPOLO, Giovanni Battista
(b. 1696, Venezia, d. 1770, Madrid)

Adoration of the Magi

1753
Oil on canvas, 408 x 210 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Tiepolo painted this altarpiece during his stay in Germany. Because if the damp climate, he could only work on the frescoes in the Würzburg Residenz in the spring and summer. So in the fall and winter he had to concentrate on painting in oil on canvas. He produced some fantastic and exotically beautiful works in which the religious subject seems merely a pretext for eye-catching, showy images, but he himself was genuinely religious. The style of the age, however, meant that even religious topics often became theatrical.