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.