Week 6: Venetian Art in the late 17th and Early 18th Centuries

Not So Splendid Isolation: Venice after the Renaissance.

G.B. Tiepolo, Neptune paying Homage to Venice, Ducal Palace, 1740s, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas.

Pompeo Batoni, Triumph of Venice, 1737, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, oil on canvas, 174.3 x 286.1 cm

Though Venice still enjoyed an international reputation, after the renaissance she began to pursue a policy of isolation, keen to insulate herself against the period known as the “Enlightenment.” Though still immensely rich and living on her “past capital”, at the end of the 17^th century Venice was too weak to participate in the wars and political manoeuvrings of Europe, so she opted for neutrality.[1] This isolationist attitude seems to have extended to visitors: reports of foreign travellers and diplomats suggest that the tourists were deliberately kept apart from the Venetian nobility; these ambassadors would have conveyed to their rulers Venice’s increasing paranoia, thus confirming impressions about Venice failing to face up to the present and living on her past glories. In the eyes of the world, Venice’s retrospective triumphalism embodied in such paintings as Tiepolo’s Neptune Paying Homage to Venice and Pompeo Batoni's Triumph of Venice seemed absurd and hopelessly out of step with the times.[2] And Venice’s singular customs, such as the “Betrothal of the Doge to the Sea,” were mocked by foreign tourists with even some of Venetians more and more sceptical of these rituals so evident in the narrative paintings of the Venetian renaissance. Could this scepticism and self-doubt have crept into painting? Piazzetta’s The Enigma is thought to symbolise Venetian civilisation in its twilight years.

The Decline of Venetian State Patronage.

Francesco Maffei, Perseus Liberating Andromeda, 1657-58, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Oil on canvas, 200 x 145 cm

Gergorio Lazzarini, Doge Morosini Offers the Reconquered Morea to Venice, 1694, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas

Niccolo Bambini, Allegory of Venice, 1682, Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, oil on canvas

Longhena and Melchior Barthel , Tomb of Doge Giovanni Pesaro (died 1659), 1669, Frari, Venice

A comparison between Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda and the same subject painted by one of the leading Venetian artists of the 17^th century demonstrates in the starkest terms how Venice was no longer one of the leading art centres of the world. Apart from the dearth of great artists in the city, there was little state patronage of the arts to sustain the high standards enjoyed in the renaissance. Instead, artists were patronised by a handful of Venetian aristocratic families like the Barbaro and the Pesaro; these employed artists to express their individual ambitions rather than any kind of overarching republican vision through painting; such patrons may even have left the allegories to the artists as in the case of Batoni’s Triumph of Venice.[3] Huge monuments like the façade of S. Maria del Giglio showing members of the Barbaro family, or the massive tomb of the Pesaro in the Frari are indications of such individual patronage. For the first time a Triumph of Venice was painted in a private palace rather than the Ducal Palace- the Ca Rezzonico- thus symbolically displacing the Doge as the official patron of Venice. Other families like the Zenobia, the richest family in Venice, employed French and Italian painters to decorate their palace; a young Tiepolo even worked for them. Painters in 17^th century Venice like Zanchi, Lazzarini, Balestra, Dorigny, Bambini and others are a mere footnote in early modern art; posterity has not been as kind to them as their contemporaries working outside Venice: Pellegrini, Amigoni and Ricci are more familiar names today.

The Emulation of Venetian Art.

Nicolas Poussin, Bacchanal with a Guitarist (The Andrians), Museé du Louvre, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 121 x 175 cm.

Peter Paul Rubens (after Titian), The Rape of Europa, c. 1630, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Oil on canvas, 181 x 200 cm.

Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Oil on canvas, 185 x 205 cm.

Anthony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, Her Majesty the Queen, Oil on canvas, 199,4 x 191,8 cm.

As Venice slipped into a slow, steady artistic decline, it could only dwell on past artistic glories. The “legacy” of painters like Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and Veronese would only be visible in the work of the many artists who were influenced by them, and who began to dominate European art for about 250 years thereafter.[4] Artists such as Poussin, Rubens, Van Dyck, the Carracci, and Rembrandt would learn from Titian and his school, and without the Venetians their careers would have been undistinguished. Poussin’s bacchanals for Cardinal Richelieu are unthinkable without Titian as a model; some works like the Bacchanal with a Guitarist seem to be referencing specific works like Titian’s Andrians. As for Rubens, he made copies of Titian’s bacchanals and took them back to his studio in Antwerp where they served him when he came to paint scenes of pagan mythology and Flemish genre. Van Dyck’s light mythological fantasias like his Cupid and Pysche for the court of Charles I are inconceivable without Titian’s example.

The Dispersal of Venetian Art, Teniers and Archduke Leopold.

 David Teniers the Younger, The Art Collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, c. 1651, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 123 x 165 cm.

Titian, “Il Bravo”, 1516-17, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 75 x 67 cm.

David Teniers the Younger, (after Giorgione), The Three Philosophers, about 1651, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, oil on panel, 21.5 x 30.9 cm.

David Teniers the Younger, The Art Collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, c. 1651, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 123 x 165 cm.

The 17^th century is known as the age of the “mega-collectors”: Charles I, Philip IV, and the Archduke Leopold William of Austria. These luminaries didn’t simply acquire individual pictures; they bought entire collections, most of which are the core holdings of many museums today.  By 1650, Archduke Leopold William’s collection was one of the most outstanding in Europe, not least because the bulk of it consisted of the collection of Duke of Hamilton’s art, most of which were Venetian paintings.[5] Leopold’s collection was presided over by the Antwerp painter, David Teniers who was appointed court painter in 1651, and who harboured ambitions to paint for the Spanish king as well. Paintings by Teniers of Leopold’s gallery display much Venetian art from Hamilton’s collection. In Tenier’s views of the Archduke’s galleries we can see Venetian pictures Like Titian’s Diana and Callisto, Nymph and Shepherd, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and Giorgione’s Three Philosophers. Apart from the odd Italian painting like Raphael’s St Margaret, or a Flemish work like Jan Gossaert’s St Luke Painting the Virgin, Rubens’s Adoration, the bulk of the pictures are Venetian. Teniers is also celebrated as an interpreter of these Venetian masterpieces. He made many copies after old masters, even changing them to suit his taste and artistic personality. As a renowned painter of peasants, it is hardly surprising to see him transform Giorgione’s three mathematicians, or astronomers into 17^th century Flemish peasants eating their gruel![6]   Other Venetian paintings copied and transformed by Teniers include Titian’s Gypsy Madonna, his first real Belliniesque painting, and the quarrelsome duo, “Il Bravo.” Some paintings in Tenier’s virtual gallery display works by other Venetian masters such Palma Vecchio’s Holy Family, Moroni’s Portrait of the Venetian sculptor Allesandro Vittoria, and Veronese’s huge Esther and Ahasuerus.[7]

The Last Great Venetian Artist?

G.B. Tiepolo, The Institution of the Rosary, 1737-39, Santa Maria del Rosario (Gesuati)Fresco, 1200 x 450 cm, , Venice.

G.B. Tiepolo, Virgin Appearing to St Dominic, 1737-39, Santa Maria del Rosario (Gesuati),Fresco, Venice.

G.B. Tiepolo, Glorification of the Pisani Family, 1761-62, Villa Pisani, Stra, Fresco, 2350 x 1350 cm.

If there was a painter who could be classed as Venice’s greatest artist in the city’s twilight years, it was G. B. Tiepolo. However despite Tiepolo’s support of Venice, it hardly treated him well: he was forced to go to Spain in 1761as a gesture of reconciliation between the two powers. In his early career Tiepolo worked in a Venice fraught with social tensions which were exacerbated as the gap between the rich and poor increased due partly to the lost money spent on wars with the Turks in the preceding century. Due to the decline of state patronage, Tiepolo was obliged to work for ruling families in Venice, though he was called outside Venice to work for other well-placed dynasties such as the Pisani at Udine in the 1760s. Tiepolo responded to this patronage, lightening his palette leading to a style at odds with the ponderous and dark canvases of the 17^th century. There were signs of this: as early as the 1720s, his ceiling paintings for the Dominicans (Gesuati) glisten with vivid greens, golden yellows, frosty pinks and cool blues, completely at odds with the tenebrous canvases of his early career. But Tiepolo was not destined to work solely for the religious orders in Venice. He would use his brush to paint an aristocratic dream world, a fantastic backcloth for a socially disengaged elite which had actually cut back on supporting the arts, with dire consequences for Venice’s future. As Haskell observed, the new nobility in Venice were reluctant to purchase contemporary art; they were intensely retrospective with their galleries full of ancestral greats from Titian to Rubens. There were magnificent exceptions like the collector Zaccaria Sagredi, and some palaces contained pictures by Tiepolo, Piazzetta, Canaletto and Zuccherelli, but inexplicably, for most noble houses in Venice, art seemed to stop at the end of the 17^th century.

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Slides.

1.      Pompeo Batoni, Triumph of Venice, 1737, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, oil on canvas, 174.3 x 286.1 cm.[8]
2.      G.B. Tiepolo, Neptune paying Homage to Venice, Ducal Palace, 1740s, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas.
3.      Giambattista Piazzetta, The Enigma, (“The Soothsayer”), Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 154 x 114 cm.[9]
4.      Pietro Longhi, The Sagredo Family, c. 1752, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 62 x 51 cm.[10]
5.      Francesco Maffei, Perseus Liberating Andromeda, 1657-58, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Oil on canvas, 200 x 145 cm.[11]
6.      Titian, Perseus and Andromeda, 1554-56, Wallace Collection, London, Oil on canvas, 185 x 199 cm.
7.      Gergorio Lazzarini, Doge Morosini Offers the Reconquered Morea to Venice, 1694, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas.[12]
8.      Facade of San Maria del Giglio, Venice, with portraits of the Barbaro Family.
9.      Longhena and Melchior Barthel , Tomb of Doge Giovanni Pesaro (died 1659), 1669, Frari, Venice.[13]
10.  Niccolo Bambini, Allegory of Venice, 1682, Ca Pesaro, Venice, oil on canvas. [14]
11.  Ca Pesaro, Venice.[15]
12.  Luca Carlevarijs, The Molo with the Ducal Palace, c. 1710, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini, Rome, Oil on canvas, 70 x 118 cm.[16]
13.  Louis Dorigny, Celebration of the Myth of Apollo, c. 1695, Palazzo Zenobio, Venice, Fresco.[17]
14.  Poussin, Bacchanal with a Guitarist (The Andrians), Museé du Louvre, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 121 x 175 cm.[18]
15.  Peter Paul Rubens (after Titian), The Rape of Europa, c. 1630, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Oil on canvas, 181 x 200 cm.
16.  Antony van Dyck, Cupid and Psyche, 1639-40, Her Majesty the Queen, Oil on canvas, 199,4 x 191,8 cm.
17.  David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery, 1651, Petworth House, National Trust, oil on canvas, 127 x 162.6 cm.
18.  Detail with Venetian paintings.
19.  Paolo Veronese, Esther and Ahasuerus, Florence, Uffizi, oil on canvas.
20.  Titian, “Il Bravo”, 1516-17, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 75 x 67 cm.[19]
21.  David Teniers the Younger, (after Giorgione), The Three Philosophers, about 1651, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, oil on panel, 21.5 x 30.9 cm.
22.  David Teniers the Younger (after G.B. Moroni), Portrait of a Sculptor (Alessandro Vittoria), Courtauld Institute, oil on paper laid on panel, 16.5 x 11. 5 cms.[20]
23.  David Teniers the Younger, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery in Brussels, 1651, Prado, Madrid, oil on copper, 104.8 x 130.4 cm.
24.  David Teniers the Younger, (after Titian), The Virgin and Child aka “The Gypsy Madonna,” Her Majesty the Queen, oil on panel, 17.3 x 23 cm.[21]
25.  Titian, The Gipsy Madonna, c. 1511, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on panel, 66 x 84 cm.[22]
26.  David Teniers the Younger, The Art Collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, c. 1651, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 123 x 165 cm.
27.  Tintoretto, Portrait of a White-Bearded Man, c. 1545, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Oil on canvas, 92 x 60 cm.
28.  Four of 5 Teniers copies at the NG of Ireland in a distinctive framing arrangement.
29.  G.B. Tiepolo, The Rape of Europa, c. 1725, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 99 x 134 cm.[23]
30.  Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Oil on canvas, 185 x 205 cm.
31.  G.B. Tiepolo, Apollo and Marsyas, c. 1725, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 100 x 135 cm.[24]
32.  G.B. Tiepolo, The Judgment of Solomon, 1726-29, Palazzo Patriarcale, Udine, Fresco, 360 x 655 cm.
33.  G.B. Tiepolo, The Institution of the Rosary, 1737-39, Santa Maria del Rosario (Gesuati)Fresco, 1200 x 450 cm, , Venice.
34.  G. B. Tiepolo, The Banquet of Cleopatra, 1743-44, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Oil on canvas, 249 x 346 cm
35.  G.B. Tiepolo, Glorification of the Pisani Family, 1761-62, Villa Pisani, Stra, Fresco, 2350 x 1350 cm.

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[1]  Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 245ff.

[2] Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 246.

[3] See Francis Haskell’s Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, (Yale University Press, 1980), 247ff.

[4] Francis Haskell, “Venetian Sixteenth-Century Painting: The Legacy” in The Genius of Venice, 47-48.

[5] Hamilton was executed on 9^th March, 1649 following the Royalist defeat in the English Civil War. According to Brown (Kings and Connoisseurs, 60), the “..best of Hamilton’s pictures, about a third of the total, were taken to Holland, probably by his brother William, Earl of Lanark, who fled England in February 1649..”

[6] See no 8 in the exh cat: David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting (Courtauld Institute, 2006). G’s Three Philosophers was priced at 400 ducats, and was acquired from B. de Nave’s collection by Hamilton, probably about 1637.

[7] David Teniers, no. 2.

[8] See Edgar Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber, Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome, (Yale University Press, 2008), 3-5. Haskell says the concetto was the painter’s, but Bowron and Kerber suggest that Foscarini may have been a “co-author” in the same way an 18^th century librettist would have been in the composing of an opera. According to these authors the picture enshrines the idea of “Venice’s resurgence after the League of Cambrai as a prototype for the Republic’s ability to overcome its present doldrums.” 

[9] Accademia Guide, no. 207. Interpretation: “this sensual young wanton was intended to symbolise Venetian civilisation in the twilight of its splendour.”

[10] Longhi was the son of a goldsmith (his real surname was Pietro Falca), Pietro Longhi tried without much success to become one of the group of eighteenth-century Venetian painters so much in demand for large-scale decorations. His youthful work included frescos in the Palazzo Sagredo which reveal his lack of talent in this field. But at about the age of 40, Longhi managed to find his own creative voice which soon made him a specialist in a highly successful new genre. Drawing on his memories of youthful studies with Giuseppe Maria Crespi (an important precursor to Longhi's brand of genre painting), he began painting small canvases on everyday subjects, showing real places and people.

Unlike most view-painters at the same time, normally forced to seek foreign patrons, Longhi mainly worked for local patrons and collectors, including the noble families of Grimani, Barbarigo, and Manin. Longhi prepared his work by making careful preparatory sketches. He concentrated almost exclusively on small-scale canvases depicting the modest day-to-day activities of aristocratic Venetian families. The wonderful amiability of these episodes of no earth-shaking importance is marked by an observant, often gently satirical touch. The playwright Goldoni called Longhi a "man seeking the truth", but his was not a very harassing quest.

In later life Longhi also produced two interesting cycles of paintings. One was a series showing the Seven Sacraments while the other depicted Hunters in the valley. Both are now in the Pinacoteca Querini-Stampalia in Venice.

Longhi occasionally painted more than one version of his own compositions, and these again were often duplicated by pupils and followers. Alessandro Longhi (1733-1813), the son of Pietro, was a successful portraitist.

[11] Maffei was active mainly in the Veneto.He had a refreshingly individualistic style, carrying on the great painterly tradition of Tintoretto and Bassano, reinforced by the example of Liss, Feti, and Strozzi, to which he added his own note of mysterious and sometimes bizarre fantasy. He painted mythological scenes and also allegorical portraits of local officials.

[12] Lazzarini was the son of a barber and brother of the painter Elisabetta Lazzarini (1662-1729), he was an accomplished painter of portraits, mythological and historical subjects. He was much patronized by the Venetian nobility, including the Labia, for whom he worked throughout the 1680s, and the Donà. He was trained first by the Genoese Francesco Rosa (d 1687), then by Girolamo Forabosco and, finally, in the academy of Pietro della Vecchia. He is documented as working in Venice from 1687 to 1715, after which he retired to Villabona.

He painted with the solidity of the Emilian Baroque, to which he added rich Venetian colour, yet his work remained academic and occasionally almost Neo-classical in style. In 1691 he painted the Charity of St Lorenzo Giustiniani (Venice, S Pietro Castello), a large, dramatic composition, in which the figures are rhythmically arranged against a theatrical architectural setting. In 1694 he was commissioned by the Venetian state to decorate the Arco Morosini in the Sala dello Scrutinio in the Doge's Palace. His style developed very little: the Pool of Bethesda (1719; Venice, Fondazione Cini) and two vast canvases of biblical subjects, Solomon Riding David's Mule and the Coronation of Joash and the Death of Athaliah (both Agordo, Chiesa di Prompicai), are grandiose, multi-figured compositions that retain a clear, academic draughtsmanship. His mythological works include Aeneas and Mezentius (Macerata, Palazzo Buonaccorsi).

Lazzarini headed an important school and is best remembered for being the teacher of Giambattista Tiepolo and Gaspare Diziani.

[13] Haskell, History and its Images (323): Ruskin: “four colossal negro caryatides, grinning and horrible, wth faces of black marble and white eyes.”

[14] Bambini was a pupil of Sebastiano Mazzoni in Venice, and then of Carlo Maratta in Rome. He was again in Venice from 1687, leaving many altarpieces painted in the manner of Pietro Liberi as well as two canvases for the Doge's Palace. His eclectic, impersonal production, characterized by affected, pearl-suffused colours and the influence of Antonio Balestra, helped to popularise the Roman academic style in Venice.

[15] On April 8, 1658, Pesaro was elected as Doge on the first ballot, not least because he was considerably younger than his opponents, and it was hoped that he would have a longer reign than had his predecessors, a wish regrettably unfulfilled. Pesaro was hated by the people of Venice, and fell ill soon after his election as Doge.Pesaro faced a difficult situation on becoming Doge. The war had displaced Venice's commerce, and Venice was heavily overtaxed to pay for the war. Pesaro died on September 30, 1659, and was buried with great pomp.

[16] Calevaris was an Italian painter, engraver and architect, his name also spelled Carlevarijs. He is regarded as the father of 18th-century Venetian view-painting (veduta), for although he was not (as sometimes asserted) the first to specialize in the genre, he approached it with a new seriousness, his training as a mathematician being reflected in his rigorous perspective settings. Carlevaris's artistic inclinations were probably inherited from his father, a painter and designer who died when his son was very young.

The eighteenth century credited Luca Carlevaris with being the first painter of any significance to paint views of Venice. Nowadays he is also considered the one who, together with Van Wittel, laid the foundation for painted vedute of that city, on which painters such as Canaletto, Marieschi and Guardi would continue to build. Carlevaris aptly synthesized the influence of various artists, including Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa, Johannes Lingelbach, the Bamboccianti, Caspar van Wittel and Johann Anton Eismann. Carlevaris was not a particularly prolific artist; his known oeuvre comprises approximately one hundred and fifty paintings, for the most part views of Piazza San Marco and its immediate surroundings. He also painted dozens of capricci with ruins and harbours, and a handful of landscapes.

[17] Louis Dorigny, part of a French family of painters, draughtsmen and printmakers. Michel Dorigny (1616-1665) was one of the principal collaborators with Simon Vouet and probably the best engraver of his works. After Vouet's death, he became an independent painter of considerable reputation. Had he not died at a relatively young age, he might have rivalled Charles Le Brun as an important history and decorative painter during the reign of Louis XIV. His sons Louis Dorigny and Nicolas Dorigny (1658-1746) were also painters and printmakers.

Louis Dorigny trained with his father and was a follower of Charles Le Brun. In 1671 he went to Italy, where he worked as a decorative painter and engraver for the rest of his life, with the exception of the years 1704-06, when he was in Paris, hoping to be received (reçu) as a member of the Académie Royale, and 1711-12, when he visited Vienna to decorate the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy (now Austrian Ministry of Finance). He was at first active in Rome, Umbria and the Marches. In 1678 he settled in Venice, where he decorated churches and palazzi in the city and on the mainland, painting in both fresco and oils. Among his works are the ceiling of S Silvestro (1678) and decorations at the Palazzo Museli.

In 1687 he moved permanently to Verona and decorated, notably, the cathedrals at Udine and Trento, as well as working at the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza (c. 1700-04) and the Villa Allegri at Grezzana (1717-20). Among his works in oils are Joseph Explaining his Dreams to Pharaoh (Verona, S Nicolò) and Susanna and the Elders (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts). His engravings include 32 plates for the Penseés chrétiennes of Pere Bonhours (1684) and six illustrations for Ovid's Metamorphoses.

[18] Wright, Poussin CR, no. 43. First recorded in in duc de R collection; in the inventory of Louis XIV’s collection drawn up by Le Brun in 1683. Discussed in 1674 by Champaigne in the French Academy.

[19] Titian: Prince of Painters, no. 13. Interpretations: an incident in Valerius Maximus; an assault on Bacchus (Justi. Drawing by Van Dyck.

[20] David Teniers, no. 13. According to Ridolfi, Della Nave had acquired a number of pictures from Vittoria.

[21] David Teniers, no. 14. The “Gypsy Madonna” may also have come from the della Nave collection, though its provenance is not proved.

[22] Titian, (2003), no. 1

[23] Accademia Guide, no. 285. Acq 1898 from Count Agosti of Belluna.

[24] Accademia Guide, no. 287. Acq 1898 from Count Agosti of Belluna