832 massimo favilla, ruggero rugolo, and dulcia meijers
northern mindset may account for this negative impression, but, given
the numerous reports on the topic, it seems mandatory to give it some
credit.
Venice, as a matter of fact, had become more and more politically iso-
lated in europe and out of date, like the rest of italy. as a city it survived,
but as a power and state it no longer was an important and active player
in the international political arena. its sea and mercantile power dwin-
dled, and the empire had become significantly smaller in size after the last
war the city of the doges fought against the Ottomans; an exhausting and
humiliating war which concluded in 1718 with the Peace of Passarowitz. But
despite its declining trade, Venice could keep itself splendidly alive thanks
to the wealth and capital accumulated in the past, and invested in land.
the state and its institutions and, for that matter, the state’s component
parts—the members of the patrician ruling class—would go a long way
towards keeping the “myth” of the Most Serene republic alive and credi-
ble; and the visual arts proved to be highly instrumental in this. in this last
century of the Venetian republic, its leading artists definitely belonged to
the highest european rank. this was not only true for the visual arts. the
city showed a high degree of vitality in all its cultural expressions, ranging
from music to literature, to theater and architecture.
a wide array of different styles coexisted in the visual arts of the Set-
tecento.58 the language of the last decades of the previous century con-
tinued well into the age. this may be partially due to a certain reluctance
to break away from the 17th-century taste, which may explain why well-
established “old-fashioned” artists—such as Bambini and Balestra, who
had set the tone in the last quarter of the previous century—were still in
high demand. the more dramatic vein inherited from the Seicento proved
to be equally popular, while for historical and allegorical scenes the pref-
erence for the grand manner persisted. at the same time, different and
new styles, also triggered by the introduction of new genres, kept evolving
while the age progressed. Provinciality, much in contrast to the political
and commercial waning of the Serenissima, is not exactly the term that
58 General surveys can be found in Pallucchini, La pittura nel Veneto (2 vols); egidio
Martini, La pittura del Settecento veneto (Udine, 1982); Michael Levey, Eighteenth Century
Venice (London, 1980); egidio Martini, La pittura veneziana del Settecento (Venice, 1964);
and an introductory survey in Bernard aikema, “La Pittura del Settecento a Venezia,” in
roberto Contini and Clelia Ginetti, eds., La pittura in Italia: Il Settecento, 2 vols (Milan,
1989–90), 1:169–217. the only major primary source on Venetian painting of the 18th Cen-
tury is Zanetti, Della pittura veneziana.