Venetian Art, 1600–1797
Massimo Favilla, Ruggero Rugolo, and Dulcia Meijers*
Part One: The 17th Century
On 21 August 1609, Galileo Galilei gave a demonstration of his recently perfected telescope to Doge Leonardo Donà and the senators of the Vene- tian Republic from a room atop the bell-tower of St. Mark’s. By means of this extraordinary instrument, places and things once invisible to the naked eye suddenly came within view: in this case, even the domes of the basilica of Santa Giustina in Padua.1 Venice thus witnessed the beginning of a new vision of the world, which in the realm of painting helped bring about the infinite and vertiginous perspectives displayed on the baroque walls and ceilings of all of Europe. Three years earlier, in 1606, the Roman curia had excommunicated the Republic of San Marco for the state’s stalwart defense of its own jurisdic- tion (the Interdict crisis). In the face of unacceptable interference from Rome, the Dominante reacted with obstinate opposition and held its ground throughout the trying episode. The passing of the century brought still other critical moments: the devastating plague of 1630, followed by the disastrous war of Candia (1645–69), in which Venice finally lost the homonymous island (Crete in Italian) to the Ottoman Empire, the high point in 1687 of Venice’s long-awaited first victories over the Ottomans led by the future Doge Francesco Morosini “il Peloponnesiaco,” and the appro- priately solemn consecration of the monumental Basilica della Salute in 1631 (in the wake of the plague) designed by Baldassare Longhena. This
* In this chapter on Venetian art a subdivision has been made, with the part on the 17th century being written by Massimo Favilla and Ruggero Rugolo and that on the 18th century by Dulcia Meijers. The somewhat divergent approaches can in part be attributed to the differences in historiographical traditions and type of scholarship pertaining to each century. Whereas study of Venetian 17th-century art is of relatively recent date and as of now largely concerned with cataloguing and classifying, scholarly interest in Venetian art of the 18th century can boast of a longstanding critical and international research that also embarked on studies of cultural historical nature. Within the context of this volume, the authors have preferred to focus primarily on the artworks that have been produced for the main island of Venice. 1 Il cannocchiale di Galileo: Venezia 1609–2009 (Venice, 2009) [Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti]. 812 massimo favilla, ruggero rugolo, and dulcia meijers turbulent cycle only came to an end with the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718, which ended the last of the Serenissima’s wars against the Ottomans and confirmed the loss of the Morea and Venice’s last imperial ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean. This was a period of profound social transformations in a context tradi- tionally hostile to just this sort of changes; but the state’s financial crises forced the Venetian patriciate to open its tightly sealed Libro d’oro and accept new members in return for badly needed funds. Thus, “new” fami- lies found their place in the city’s aristocracy, despite the irritation of the older noble clans.
From Padovanino to Tiberio Tinelli The beginning of 17th century in Venetian painting witnessed the slow but inexorable decline of a longstanding tradition incarnated in the late tizia nismo of Jacopo Negretti, known as Palma il Giovane (Venice, 1524–28). At the same time, Alessandro Varotari or il Padovanino (Padua, 1588–Venice, 1649), after a period in Rome from 1616–19, was attempting to give life to “a painting style of clear and crystalline atmosphere”2 that, while look- ing back to the young Titian, was filtered through the interpretation the Caracci and their followers had given to 16th-century Venetian painting. The Orpheus and Eurydice in the Gallerie dell’Accademia exemplifies this style, which would find its most genuine and effective expression in Pado- vanino’s pupil, Girolamo Forabosco (Venice, 1605–Padua, 1679). The syn- thesis between Titian’s enduring influence and new Baroque sensibilities emerges in Forabosco’s masterpiece, the Miraculous Rescue of a Gondola, in the parish church of Malamocco in 1646, a votive painting which pres- ents the occasion for the realization of a group portrait sketched in soft, fluid colors. Another of Padovanino’s pupils was Tiberio Tinelli (Venice, 1586–1638), “a most valiant and capricious painter” who “worked marvelously in portraits.”3 He was noted for his ability to restore life and breath to his subjects, and his refined and erudite approach; his early work echoes a studied giorgionismo veiled with melancholy, and a masterly disegno miti- gated by a soft brushstroke and warm colors come together in the elegant Ludovico Widmann (1638) in the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
2 Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi, I quattro secoli della pittura veneziana (Venice, 2003), p. 93. 3 Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’Arte, ovvero le Vite de gl’Illustri Pittori Veneti e dello Stato, ed. D. von Hadeln, 2 vols (1648; Berlin, 1914–24), 278.