The Museo Correr has a total of 33 copper etching plates by various members of the Tiepolo family: 7 by Giambattista Tiepolo, 25 by Giandomenico and one by Lorenzo.
Part of the collection originally put together by Teodoro Correr, this group may not be large – compared to the vast output of the 3 Venetian artists in the field of etchings and engravings – but it is invaluable for various reasons: it casts light on the way they used the etching technique; enables us to understand the various stages in the production of a single print; and provides an insight into the, often complex, interplay of influences between the works of Giambattista and the two sons who were his pupils. The legal inventory of the Correr bequest to the city of Venice – drawn up in 1831, a year after the man’s death – lists not only 146 copper engraving plates (including the 33 by the Tiepolo family) but also numerous other printing plates in wood (including the 6 monumental wood-cut plates for Jacopo de’ Barbieri’s Bird’s-Eye View of Venice). All of this was material which Correr had acquired from the numerous printers in Venice who, when the plates were in too poor a condition to be used again (or their subject-matter had gone out of fashion), began to sell off these pieces to collectors; however, given that most of these plates were copper, it was unfortunately more common for them either to scrape them flat and then re-use them or even melt them down. By the time Correr acquired this extraordinarily valuable collection of Tiepolo plates in the early 19th century, whole aspects of the Venetian past were gradually being swept aside by new cultural ideas and the neo-classical tastes of the day. In effect, their survival is due solely to the omnivorous collecting of a manwho was determined to save as much of that past as he could.