The Decline of Venice
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The eighteenth century saw the decline of Venice as a major power. One result of the Republic's dwindling fortunes was the virtual disappearance of state sponsorship of the arts. In response to the need to find new markets the city's painters developed two ways of representing Venice that were intimately related to its gradual descent. The first is the work of the view painters, whose eminently exportable scenes of the astonishing city signal its eminence as a tourist attraction at the time tourism was being invented. The second is the glorious classical, mythological and allegorical paintings with which Giovanni Battista Tiepolo fulfilled the commissions of the great families of Venice. In mythological guise and sixteenth-century garb Tiepolo's extravagant art met the aristocracy's demand for ostentatious representations of their own power, virtues, and glory. Tiepolo painted no more than a few portraits and no canal views or domestic scenes. He seldom painted Venetians at all. Yet the conflicts, desires, self-perceptions, and values of eighteenth century Venice are as clearly revealed in his frescos for the Labia, the Rezzonico, the Pisani and others as if he had done nothing else. It has been said of Tiepolo's masterpiece, the enormous Wnrzburg fresco of The Four Continents Paying Homage to Karl Philip von Greiffenklau (1753), that "nowhere else in the whole history of recorded art can one find a greater disparity between the insignificance of the patron and the
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ntests to determine which family could serve the most expensive banquets, the Labia had achieved a certain notoriety with one meal that was served on gold plate which was then thrown into the canal at the end of the dinner. He adds that Maria Labia was famous for her collection of jewels and that she would have "felt no great difficulty in identifying herself with the beautiful Egyptian queen" who was capable of such ostentatious extravagance.
The Rezzonico were relative newcomers to the nobility. They were a Genoese family who had only been elevated to patrician status in 1687. But they had risen very fast--even producing a pope, Clement XIII, by 1758. That same year the family's second son, Lodovico, was engaged to marry Faustina Savorgnan, a member of the highest nobility--so high, in fact, that the expense of having Tiepolo paint a marriage fresco was considered justified.
In this work, generally known as Marriage Allegory of the Rezzonico (1761), the young couple was elevated much higher than any member of the family had been thus far. They were depicted in the chariot of the sun god Apollo, with Fame leading the way. As Sohm notes, such depictions were certainly part of a tradition of "spousal deification," whic
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Romans Tiepolo's, Apollo Fame, German Europe, Egypt Haskell, Venetian Republic, Asia America, York McGraw-Hill, York Atheneum, Girolamo Mengozzi-Colonna, Europe Tiepolo, eighteenth century, giambattista tiepolo, venetian nobility, secular allegories, tiepolo painted, labia rezzonico pisani, labia rezzonico, eighteenth-century venice, sources tiepolo's, rezzonico pisani, tiepolo paint, review books 6, 6 february 1997, books 6 february, tiepolo's secular allegories,
Approximate Word count = 4337
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)
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