by Will Durant
Throughout the nineteenth century Vivaldi was almost forgotten except by scholars tracing the development of Bach. Then in 1905 Arnold Schering’s Geschichte des Instrumentalkonzerts restored him to prominence; and in the 1920s Arturo Toscanini gave his passion and prestige to Vivaldi’s cause. Today the Red Priest takes for a time the highest place among the Italian composers of the eighteenth century.
3. Remembrances
From the Indian summer of Venetian art a dozen painters rise up and ask for remembrance. We merely salute Giambattista Pittoni, whom Venice placed only after Tiepolo and Piazzetta; and Jacopo Amigoni, whose voluptuous style passed down to Boucher; and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who carried his colors to England, France, and Germany; it was he who decorated Kimbolton Castle, Castle Howard, and the Banque de France. Marco Ricci makes a more striking figure, since he killed a critic and himself. In 1699, aged twenty-three, he stabbed to death a gondolier who had slighted his paintings. He fled to Dalmatia, fell in love with its landscapes, and caught them so skillfully with his colors that Venice forgave him and hailed him as Tintoretto reborn. His uncle Sebastiano Ricci took him to London, where they collaborated on the tomb of the Duke of Devonshire. Like so many artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he loved to paint real or imaginary ruins, not forgetting himself. In 1729, after several attempts, he succeeded in committing suicide. In 1733 one of his paintings was sold for $500; in 1963 it was resold for $90,000,51 illustrating both the appreciation of art and the depreciation of money.
Rosalba Camera is more pleasant to contemplate. She began her career by designing patterns for point de Venise lace; then (like the young Renoir) she painted snuffboxes; then miniatures; finally she found her forte in pastel. By 1709 she had won such fame that when Frederick IV of Denmark came he chose her to paint for him pastel portraits of the most beautiful or celebrated ladies of Venice. In 1720 Pierre Crozat, millionaire art collector, invited her to Paris. There she was welcomed and feted as no other foreign artist since Bernini. Poets wrote sonnets about her; Regent Philippe d’Orléans visited her; Watteau painted her, and she him; Louis XV sat for her; she was elected to the Académie de Peinture, and offered, as her diploma piece, the Muse that hangs in the Louvre. It was as if in her the soul of rococo had been made flesh.
In 1730 she went to Vienna, where she made pastel portraits of Charles • VI, his Empress, and the Archduchess Maria Theresa. Back in Venice, she so absorbed herself in her art that she forgot to marry. The Accademia there has a roomful of her portraits, the Gemäldegalerie of Dresden has 157, almost all characterized by pink faces, blue backgrounds, rosy innocence, dimpled delicacy; even when she pictured Horace Walpole52 she made him look like a girl. She flattered every sitter but herself; the self-portrait in Windsor Castle shows her in her later years, white-haired, a bit somber, as if foreseeing that she would soon be blind. For the last twelve of her eighty-two years she had to live without the light and color that had been to her almost the essence of life. She left her mark on the art of her time: La Tour may have taken fire from her; Greuze remembered her idealization of young women; her rosy tints—la vie en rose— passed down to Boucher and Renoir. Giovanni Battista Piazzetta was a greater artist, superior to sentiment, disdaining decoration, seeking not so much to please the public as to conquer the difficulties, and honor the highest traditions, of his métier. His fellow craftsmen recognized this, and though Tiepolo had led in establishing (1750) the Venetian Accademia di Pittura e Scultura, it was Piazzetta whom they chose as its first president. His Rebecca at the Well53 is worthy of Titian, and makes even less concession to conventional conceptions of beauty; enough of Rebecca is revealed to stir the savage breast, but her Dutch face and snub nose were not fashioned for Italian ecstasies. It is the man who moves us here, a figure worthy of the Renaissance: a powerful face, an insinuating beard, a feathered hat, a gleam of sly inducement in his eyes—and all the picture a masterpiece of color, texture, and design. It was characteristic of Piazzetta that he was the most respected of Venetian painters in his day, and died the poorest.
Antonio Canale, called Canaletto, is more famous, for half the world knows Venice through his vedute, or views, and England knew him in the flesh. He followed for a while his father’s profession of scene painting for theaters; in Rome he studied architecture; returning to Venice, he applied compass and T square to his drawing, and made architecture a feature of his pictures. From these we know the Queen of the Adriatic as she looked in the first half of the eighteenth century. We note from his Baccino di San Marco 54 how crowded with vessels was the main lagoon; we watch A Regatta on the Grand Canal,55 and see that life was as full and eager then as it had ever been; and we are pleased to find the Ponte di Rialto ,56 the Piazza San Marco ,57 the Piazzetta,58 the Palazzo dei Dogi,59 and Santa Maria della Salute60 almost as we find them today, except for the rebuilt Campanile. Such pictures were precisely what tourists needed in the cloudy north to remember gratefully the sun and magic of Venezia la Serenissima. They bought and paid, and took their mementos home, and soon England demanded Canaletto himself. He came in 1746, and painted extensive views of Whitehall61 and The Thames from Richmond House; this last, astonishing in its combination of space, perspective, and detail, is Canaletto’s masterpiece. Not till 1755 did he return to Venice. There in 1766, aged sixty-nine, he was still hard at work, and proudly wrote, on The Interior of St. Mark’s, “Done without spectacles.”62 He handed down his technique of precise measurement to his nephew Bernardo Bellotto Canaletto, and his flair for vedute to his “good scholar,” Francesco Guardi, whom we shall meet again.
As Canaletto showed the outer view of the splendid city, so Pietro Longhi revealed the life within the walls by applying genre painting to the middle class. The lady at breakfast en négligé, the abbé tutoring her son, her little girl fondling a toy dog, the tailor coming to display a frock, the dancing master putting the lady through the steps of a minuet, the children wide-eyed at a menagerie, the young women frolicking at blindman’s buff, the tradesmen in their shops, the maskers at Carnival, the theaters, the coffeehouses, the literary coteries, the poets reciting their verses, the quack doctors, the fortunetellers, the vendors of sausages and plums, the promenade in the piazza, the hunting party, the fishing party, the family on its villeggiatura holiday: all the mentionable activities of the bourgeoisie are there, even more fully than in the comedies of Goldoni, Longhi’s friend. It is not great art, but it is delightful, and shows a society more orderly and refined than we should have imagined from the aristocrats of the gambling casinos or the cursing stevedores of the wharves.
FIG. 49—JOHANN GOTTFRIED SCHADOW: The Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate. German Information Center.
FIG. 50—KARL GOTTHARD LANGHANS: The Brandenburg Gate (1788-91). German Information Center,
FIG. 51—ANGELICA KAUFFMANN: The Vestal Virgin . Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
FIG. 52—ANGELICA KAUFFMANN: Stanislas Poniatowski . Uffizi, Florence,
FIG. 53—DANIEL CHODOWIECKI: A Gathering in the Zoological Garden. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.
FIG. 54—JOHANN HEINRICH TISCHBEIN: Lessing in Youth . National Gallery, Berlin.
FIG. 55—ANTON RAPHAEL MENGS: Self-Portrait, pastel. Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. Reproduced from Max Osborn, Die Kunst des Rokoko (Berlin: Pro-pyläen Verlag, 1929).
FIG. 56—ENGRAVING BY KARL BARTH AFTER A DRAWING BY STOBBE: Immanuel Kant.
FIG. 57—JOHANN FRIEDRICH AUGUST TISCHBEIN: Schiller.
FIG. 58—ANTON GRAFF: The Actress Korona Schroter. Schlossmuseum, Weimar.
FIG. 59—JOHANN HEINRICH WILHELM TISCHBEIN: Goethe in the Roman Cam-pagua. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frank-furt-am-Main.
FIG. 60—ASMUS JAKOB CARSTENS: The Birth of Light, drawing. Schlossmuseum, Weimar.
FIG. 61—ALEXANDER ROSLIN (1718?-53): Gustavus III. National Museum, Stockholm.
FIG. 62—The Bridgewater Canal at Barton Bridge (1794). Reproduced from A. S. Turberville,
Johnson’s England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933); Vol. I.
FIG. 63—THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH: George III. Windsor Castle. Copyright reserved.
FIG. 64—SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Edmund Burke, 1774. The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
FIG. 65—ENGRAVING BY JOHN JONES AFTER A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Charles James Fox. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953.
FIG. 66—JOHN HOPPNER: William Pitt the Younger. The Tate Gallery, London.
FIG. 67—GEORGE ROMNEY: Actress Mary Robinson . Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London.
FIG. 68—ROBERT PINE (1742-90): David Garrick . National Portrait Gallery, London.
FIG. 69—ENGRAVING BY JOHN HALL (1739-97) AFTER A PAINTING BY REYNOLDS: Richard Brinsley Sheridan . National Portrait Gallery, London.
FIG. 70—FROM A PRINT AFTER A DRAWING BY CANALETTO: An Inside View of the Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens. Reproduced from A. S. Turberville, Johnson’s England, Vol. I.
FIG. 71—SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Portrait of the Artist as a Deaf Man. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery, London.
FIG. 72—CHIPPENDALE AND HAIGH IN THE STYLE OF ROBERT ADAM: Side Table of Gilt and Silvered Wood. Courtesy of Lord Harewood, Leeds. (Photo by Mr. Bertram Unné.)
FIG. 73—THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH: Mrs. Sarah Siddons. National Gallery, London.
FIG. 74—ROSALBA CARRIERA: Horace Walpole. Lord Walpole Collection, Wolterton Hall, Norwich,
FIG. 75—PAUL SANDBY, Strawberry Hill c. 1774, drawing. Reproduced from the original drawing, engraved by E. Rooker.
FIG. 76—THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH: The Honorable Mrs. Graham. National Gallery of Scotland.
FIG. 77—ARCHIBALD SKIRVING: Robert Burns . National Gallery of Scotland.
FIG. 78—HENRY RAEBURN: Lord Newton . National Gallery of Scotland.
FIG. 79—THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH: The Market Cart . Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery, London.
FIG. 80—SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement.
FIG. 81—GEORGE DANCE (1741-1825): James Boswell. National Portrait Gallery, London.
FIG. 82—SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Laurence Sterne. Reproduced with permission. (Photograph courtesy of the University of London, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.)
FIG. 83—GEORGE ROMNEY: William Cowper . National Portrait Gallery, London.
FIG. 84—STUDIO OF REYNOLDS: Oliver Goldsmith . National Portrait Gallery, London.
FIG. 85—MME. VIGÉE-LEBRUN: Marie Antoinette . Reproduced from Max Osborn, Die Kunst des Rokoko.
FIG. 86—SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: Dr. Samuel Johnson . Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery, London.
FIG. 87—JEAN-ANTOINE HOUDON: The Artist’s Wife . Louvre, Paris. Reproduced from Max Osborn, Die Kunstdes Rokoko .
FIG. 88—JEAN-BAPTISTE PIGALLH: Denis Diderot . Louvre, Paris. From Max Osborn, Die Kuvst des Rokoko.
FIG. 89—HOUDON: Voltaire. Comédie Française. (Photo Jean Roubier.)
FIG. 90—HOUDON: Mme. de Sérilly . Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London.
FIG. 91—HOUDON: Mirabeau.
FIG. 92—CLODION (CLAUDE MICHEL): The Intoxication of Wine (Nymph and Satyr ), terra-cotta statue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913.
FIG. 93—JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID: The Oath of the Horatii . Louvre, Paris.
FIG. 94—HOUDON: Diana , bronze. Louvre, Paris. Reproduced from Max Osborn, Die Kunst des Rokoko .
FIG. 95—NATTIER: Beaumarchais . Private Collection. Reproduced from French Art of the 18th Century , ed. Stéphane Faniel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957).
FIG. 96—HOUDON: George Washington . Louvre, Paris.
FIG. 97—MME. VIGÉE-LEBRUN: Portrait of the Artist and Her Daughter , Louvre, Paris.
FIG. 98—ENGRAVING BY J. E. NOCHEZ AFTER A PAINTING BY ALLAN RAMSAY: Jean Jacques Rousseau . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Edith Root Grant, E. W. Root, and Elihu Root, Jr., 1937.
4. Tiepolo
The Venetian who made Europe believe for a moment that the Renaissance had returned was Giambattista Tiepolo. Any summer’s day will see a procession of students and tourists entering the Residenz of the Bishop of Würzburg to see the staircase and ceiling frescoed by Tiepolo in 1750-53; these are the peak of Italian painting in the eighteenth century. Or look at The Trinity Appearing to St. Clement in the National Gallery at London; observe its skillful composition, its precise drawing, its subtle handling of light, its depth and glow of color; surely this is Titian? Perhaps, if Tiepolo had not wandered so, he might have joined the giants.
Or, possibly, he was handicapped by good fortune. He was the last child of a prosperous Venetian merchant who, dying, left a substantial patrimony. Handsome, bright, frolicsome, Gian “soon acquired an aristocratic scorn of anything plebeian.”63 In 1719, aged twenty-three, he married Cecilia, sister of Francesco Guardi. She gave him four daughters and five sons, of whom two became painters. They lived in “a fine house” in the parish of Santa Trinità.
His talent had already bloomed. In 1716 he exhibited his Sacrifice of Isaac,64 crude but powerful; he was visibly at this time under Piazzetta’s influence. He studied Veronese too, and assumed a maniera Paolesca of sumptuous raiment, warm colors, and sensuous lines. In 1726 the Archbishop of Udine invited him to adorn his cathedral and palace. Tiepolo chose themes from the story of Abraham, but the treatment was not quite Biblical: Sarah’s face, emerging from a Renaissance ruff, is a corrugation of wrinkles revealing two vestigial teeth; the angel, however, is an Italian athlete with an engaging leg. Tiepolo seems to have felt that in a century that was beginning to laugh at angels and miracles he could let his humor play with reverend traditions, and the amiable archbishop indulged him. But the artist had to be careful, for the Church was still one of the chief sources of pictorial commissions in the Catholic world.
The other source was the layman with a palace to be adorned. In the Palazzo Casali-Dugnani at Milan (1731) Gian told in frescoes the story of Scipio. These were not typical Tiepolo, for he had not yet formed his characteristic style of figures moving easily and loosely in undefined space, but they showed a skill that made a stir in northern Italy. By 1740 he found his forte, and achieved what some65 have thought his chef-d’oeuvre—the ceiling and banquet hall of the Palazzo Clerici in Milan. Here he chose, as vehicles for his fancy, The Four Parts of the World, The Course of the Sun, and Apollo with the Pagan Gods. He was happy to leave the somber world of Christian legend and disport himself on Olympian heights where he could use the Greco-Roman divinities as figures in a realm free from the laws of motion, the chains of gravity, and even the academic rules of design. Like most artists, whose moral code melts in the heat of their feelings, he was at heart a pagan; moreover, a fine body might be the product of a resolute and formative soul, and be therefore itself a spiritual fact. For thirty years now Tiepolo would send gods and goddesses—garbed in gauze and nonchalantly nude—frolicking through space, chasing one another among the planets, or making love on a cushion of clouds.
Back in Venice, he returned to Christianity, and his religious pictures absolved his mythologies. For the Scuola di San Rocco he painted a canvas, Hagar and Ishmael, notable for the fine figure of a sleeping boy. In the Church of the Gesuati—renamed by the Dominicans Santa Maria del Rosario—he pictured The Institution of the Rosary. For the Scuola dei Carmini, or School of the Carmelite Monks, he depicted The Madonna of Mount Carmel; this almost rivaled Titian’s Annunciation. For the Church of St. Alvise he made three pictures; one of these, Christ Carrying the Cross, is crowded with powerful figures vividly portrayed. Tiepolo had paid his debt to his native faith.
His fancy moved more freely on palace walls. In the Palazzo Barbaro he showed The Apotheosis of Francesco Barbaro —now in t
he Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For the Palace of the Doges he portrayed Neptune Offering to Venus the Riches of the Sea. To the Palazzo Papadopoli he contributed two delightful snatches of Venice in Carnival—The Minuet and The Charlatan. And (topping all his palace pictures in Venice) he embellished the Palazzo Labia with frescoes telling the story of Antony and Cleopatra in magnificent scenes brilliantly realized. A fellow artist, Girolamo Mengozzi-Colonna, painted the architectural backgrounds in a burst of Palladian splendor. On one wall the meeting of the two rulers; on the opposite wall their banquet; on the ceiling a wild array of flying figures representing Pegasus, time, beauty, and the winds—these blown about by jolly puffing imps. In The Meeting Cleopatra descends from her barge in dazzling raiment revealing twin mounds calculated to lure a tired triumvir to fragrant rest. In the still more effulgent Banquet she drops a pearl without price into her wine; Antony is impressed by this careless wealth; and on a balcony musicians strum their lyres to double the jeopardy and triple the intoxication. This masterpiece, recalling and rivaling Veronese, was one of the pictures that Reynolds copied in 1752.
Such work in the grand style raised Tiepolo to a height visible across the Alps. Count Francesco Algarotti, friend of Frederick and Voltaire, spread his name through Europe. As early as 1736 the Swedish minister in Venice informed his government that Tiepolo was just the man to decorate the royal palace in Stockholm; “he is full of wit and zest, easy to deal with, bubbling over with ideas; he has a gift for brilliant color, and works at a prodigious speed; he paints a picture in less time than it takes another artist to mix his colors.”66 Stockholm was already beautiful, but it seemed so far away.