Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
guests, serving wenches, begging lapdogs and (most shocking of all) Protestant Germans.
When the Inquisition demanded he change the painting, Veronese refused to remove the
offending Germans and altered scarcely a stroke of paint, simply changing the title to
Feast in the House of Levi
. In an early victory for freedom of expression, Venice stood by
the decision.
The next generation of Mannerists included Palma il Giovane (1544-1628), who fin-
ished Titian's
Pietá
after the master's death and fused Titian's early naturalism with
Tintoretto's drama. Another Titian acolyte who adopted Tintoretto's dramatic lighting was
Jacopo da Ponte from Bassano del Grappa, called Bassano (1517-92). Bassano's work is
so high contrast and high drama, at first glance you might wonder how black-velvet paint-
ings wound up in Gallerie dell'Accademia, Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore and Bassano
del Grappa's Museo Civico.
Winged lions carved onto Venetian facades symbolise St Mark, Venice's patron saint, but some served
sinister functions. In the 1500s, the Consiglio dei Dieci (Council of Ten) established
bocca dei leoni
(lion's
mouths), stone lions' heads with slots for inserting anonymous denunciations of neighbours for crimes
raging from cursing to conspiracy.
Going for Baroque
By the 18th century, Venice had endured plague and seen its ambitions for world domina-
tion dashed - but the city repeatedly made light of its dire situation in tragicomic art. Pi-
etro Longhi (1701-85) dispensed with lofty subject matter and painted wickedly witty
Venetian social satires, while Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) turned religious themes
into a premise for dizzying ceilings with rococo sunbursts. Ca' Rezzonico became a show
place for both their talents, with an entire salon of Pietro Longhi's drawing-room scenari-
os and Giambattista Tiepolo's trompe l'œil ceiling masterpieces.
Instead of popes on thrones, portraitist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757) captured her so-
cialite sitters on snuffboxes, and painted in a medium she pioneered: pastels. Her portraits
at Ca' Rezzonico walk a fine line between Tiepolo's flattery and Longhi's satire, revealing
her sitters' every twinkle and wrinkle.
As the 18th-century party wound down, the Mannerists' brooding theatricality merged
with Tiepolo's pastel beauty in works by Tiepolo's son, Giandomenico Tiepolo
(1727-1804). His 1747-49
Stations of the Cross
in Chiesa di San Polo takes a dim view
of humanity in light colours, illuminating the jeering faces of Jesus' tormentors. Giando-
menico used a lighter touch working alongside his father on the frescoes at Villa Val-
