venetian art, 1600–1797 837
characterized by a heavy, somewhat pathetic and dramatic atmosphere,
strong chiaroscuro, and muscular figures, as clearly shown in his Martyr
dom of Saint Bartholomew in the church of San Stae.71 Later, these were
replaced by effigies in gracefully studied poses, reminiscent of the reper-
toire adopted in the theater and rendered in a bright palette of colors. the
artist was prolific in many different genres and had a vast output. in addi-
tion to his enormous production on paper, he executed many oil paint-
ings on canvas. But throughout his career, in which he was later assisted
by his two sons, Domenico and Lorenzo, he was especially in demand as
a decorator working in the medium of fresco, in which he excelled. His
overpowering artistic personality dominated the age, beyond the shadow
of a doubt.
almost all contemporary critics liked to compare Giovanni Battista
tiepolo to Veronese.72 this equation goes also to show how little tiepolo
was seen as a product of his own time. More than had been the case with
any other painter before him, the aesthetic and stylistic conceptions of
Veronese were indeed fully reawakened. to tiepolo, the frescoes and can-
vases of his 16th-century predecessor proved to be valuable as prototypes
in his great schemes of decoration for the many homes and dwellings of
affluent and powerful commissioners, not only in Venice or in the towns
on the mainland or in Milan but also at the distant courts of Würzburg
and of Madrid, where he spent his final years. Giovanni Battista tiepolo
was a Venetian, certainly, but he could be also claimed as a european, or
as—and this is perhaps a more appropriate term for the age—a cosmo-
politan, who more than any other artist of his time can be associated with
the spirit of the ancien regime.
a similar pattern of grand decorations can be observed in the religious
institutions, whose patronage was primarily dominated by the same
aristocracy. the orders were competing with each other in the splen-
dors of their commissions to the leading artists. it feels somehow more
appropriate, though, to look at the elaborate apotheoses of Christ, Mary,
or of saints surrounded by a whirl of angels and clouds on the ceilings
of churches than at glorious celebrations of still-living members of the
Venetian patrician class. even a painter like Giovanni Battista Piazzetta,
while still rooted in the style of the tenebrosi and attempting to break
71 executed in 1722. See footnote 80, William L. Barcham, The Religious Paintings of
Giambattista Tiepolo: Piety and Tradition in EighteenthCentury Venice (Oxford, 1989),
42–43; Gemin and Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo, pp. 57–58 and 232.
72 See specifically the chapter on this topic in alpers and Baxandall, Tiepolo and the
Pictorial Intelligence, pp. 21–30.