822 massimo favilla, ruggero rugolo, and dulcia meijers
Sebastiano Mazzoni, with a final result of “incredible felicity and the won-
derful effect of tenderness.”29 “a frothy and iridescent river: strawberry,
raspberry, orange, blue changing into pink, all tempered by the snowy
quality of the whites”30 is manifested in the large lunette of the left nave
in San Zaccaria with The Doge Giustiniano Partecipazio and the Emperor
Leone V l’Armeno receiving from the East the body of San Zaccaria from the
early 1680s.31
Born in the Fifties: Bambini, Dorigny, Bellucci, Lazzarini, Molinari
in 1676 the Procuratore di San Marco, Leonardo Pesaro, nephew of the
recently deceased Doge Giovanni, gave a demonstration of “superior
intelligence” and “greatness of mind”32 by organizing a lavish party in the
uncompleted family palace on the Canal Grande at San Stae, the work of
Baldassare Longhena. the party was to celebrate two events: the visit of
the apostolic nuncio and the marriage of the procurator’s daughter elena
to Pietro Contarini.
in 1682, nicolò Bambini (Venice, 1651–1739), a student of Sebastiano
Mazzoni and, in rome, Carlo Maratta, from whom he learned precision
in design and an elegance of forms, painted on the ceiling of a corner
room of the palace several canvases forming part of an elaborate struc-
ture further enriched by luxuriant wood carvings. in the composition’s
center oval depicting The Triumph of Venice is the figure of the glorious
Dominante, a figure of classical beauty inspired by the models of titian
and Veronese filtered through the example of Pietro Liberi. as a whole,
the effective coupling of sculpture and painting, perhaps guided by the
wise hand of Longhena, is able to link indissolubly the fate of one of
Venice’s most important families with the even greater and more mythic
destiny of the republic; both in content and in form, the ensemble pro-
poses a decorative typology whose richness echoes Veronese’s already
classic 16th-century ceilings in the Ducal Palace.
29 Zanetti, Della pittura veneziana, p. 401.
30 nicola ivanoff, “Pitture e sculture de la rotonda,” in La Rotonda di Rovigo (Vicenza,
1967), p. 97.
31 Massimo Favilla and ruggero rugolo, Venezia barocca. Splendori e illusioni di un
mondo in “decadenza,” (Vicenza, 2009), p. 162.
32 Cristoforo ivanovich, Minerva al tavolino, lettere diverse di proposta e risposta a varii
personaggi sparse d’alcuni componimenti in prosa et in verso, concernenti per lo più alle
vittorie della Lega contra il turco fino questo anno, parte II (Venice, 1688), p. 127.