The Venetian Giovanni Battista Tièpolo (1696-1770) was arguably the greatest painter of eighteenth-century Europe and the outstanding first master of the Grand Manner.
His art celebrates the imagination by transposing the world of ancient history and myth, the scriptures, and sacred legends into a grandiose, even theatrical language.
Colonna’s perspective framework for Tiepolo’s frescoes is crucial to understanding the eighteenth-century notion of painting as a staged fiction-something intended to involve the viewer on a purely imaginative level.
This was in line with theater practice of the day-especially opera.