venetian art, 1600–1797 817
tumultuous events of the 17th century, the terrible plague that struck Ven-
ice in 1630 offers a dividing line between two eras. in the following period
rife with political and social change, another foresto, Giovanni Battista
Langetti (Genoa, c. 1635–Venice 1676), arrived in Venice around 16559 and
introduced the Caravaggesque culture whose overwhelming force would
give life to the so-called tenebrosi (the dark and mysterious ones).10 this
was a style connoted by a dramatic realism very different from a Vene-
tian sensibility that had retained more affinities with early 16th-century
tastes; a style more in line with the climate of uncertainty and anxiety
generated by the vicissitudes of the war of Candia. in his altarpiece of
the Crucified Christ and Mary Magdalene of 1663, first in the church of
the terese and now at Ca’ rezzonico, Langetti shows off a vibrant play
of chiaroscuro, where the body nailed to the cross with arms nearly paral-
lel betrays a neo-medieval inspiration.11 the same period witnessed the
works of Pietro Vecchia (Vicenza? 1603–Venice 1678),12 an eccentric artist
with a predilection for the grotesque and a penchant for bizarre and even
frightening physiognomies. His Francesco Borgia attending the exhuma
tion of the cadaver of the Empress Isabella, executed between the seventh
and eighth decades of the century, originally for the Jesuit convent in Ven-
ice, represents a theatrical and horrifying memento mori.13 the touching
Deposition the neapolitan Luca Giordano painted around 1665 in Santa
Maria del Pianto, now in the Gallerie dell’accademia, presents a scene
whose characters place themselves to the sides, leaving, in a violent and
disorderly centrifugal movement, a dark and ominous void in the center.14
Such a scene bears little in common with the works of the same artist in
the Salute, painted only a few years later and portraying a neo-titianesque
Marian celebration.
From the middle of the 17th century, Venice also became the undis-
puted european capital of dramatic theater with musical accompaniment.
the success of the genre had strong reverberations throughout the art
9 Marina Stefani Mantovanelli, “Giovanni Battista Langetti,” Saggi e memorie di storia
dell’arte 17 (1990), 41–105.
10 Pedrocco, “Venezia,” pp. 57–73; Bernard aikema, “il secolo dei contrasti: le tenebre,”
in Lucco, ed., La pittura nel Veneto, 2:543–72, 543–72.
11 Stefania Mason, “L’immaginario della morte e della peste nella pittura del Seicento,”
in Lucco, ed., La pittura nel Veneto, Il Seicento, 2:523–42, 536.
12 Bernard aikema, “Pietro della Vecchia, a Profile,” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte
14 (1984), 77–100.
13 Mason, “L’immaginario della morte,” p. 521.
14 Pedrocco, “Venezia,” p. 60.