Portrait of a Page

This was painted around 1760, near the end of Venice's last great chapter of painting. Giandomenico Tiepolo was the son and chief assistant of Giambattista Tiepolo, the most sought-after decorator in Europe, and the two worked almost as one hand across the ceilings of Venice and Germany. Within a few years the whole family would pack up for Madrid to paint for the king of Spain, and the father would die there. A page was a young servant attached to a noble household, often richly dressed to show off his master's standing. Giandomenico had a sharp eye for exactly this kind of figure, the ordinary person caught at the edge of grand life, whom he would later fill whole rooms with in his scenes of everyday Venice.