The Baptism of Christ c. 1770 - 1790

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo made this drawing of The Baptism of Christ with pen and brown wash. The baptism of Christ in the gospels represents a key moment of revelation and recognition, of the kind valued by the church in eighteenth-century Venice. Here the visual codes of social class are quite visible; though ostensibly equal before God, a social hierarchy is in effect. We see a crowd of onlookers, some clothed, others not, witnessing the event in this loose, informal composition. Tiepolo inherited the family workshop from his father, and it served as an important school for painters. To understand this drawing better, we might ask how the institution of the Venetian workshop shaped the production and reception of art. What were the social conditions for artists in the 1700s? The historian can look at workshop accounts, artists’ biographies, and other archival sources, reflecting on how art is contingent on social and institutional context.