The Adoration of the Shepherds

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo — son and principal collaborator of Giovanni Battista — painted this Adoration of the Shepherds in 1754 while working with his father on the Würzburg Residenz decoration. The younger Tiepolo absorbed his father's style thoroughly while developing his own more genre-inflected approach to religious and secular subjects. This Adoration demonstrates his ability to handle devotional narrative with the warmth and humanity that distinguished his work from his father's more grandiose manner.

The holy group is depicted in a warm, intimate interior, the shepherds crowding close with naive reverence. Domenico Tiepolo's handling is slightly more rustic and genre-oriented than his father's idealising tendency. His warm, earthy palette and his observational interest in the faces and gestures of ordinary people give the scene its distinctive human quality.