26. View of Venice,
Piazza San Marco and Piazzetta, c. 1740.

Oil on canvas, 67.3 x 102 cm.

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.

 

 

Therefore, the artists’ movement had barely let up. Venice, with the resources that its two academies provided, remained one of the places in the world where young artists found it easier to initiate their technique. The government deserved credit for not having neglected anything as far as ensuring the protection and prosperity of local industry and art. It was the government that granted Briati the sole privilege of manufacturing and selling crystals styled after those from Bohemia, the importation of which was prohibited. In this way he came to manufacture the most sought-after chandeliers and mirrors in Europe.[8] In 1764, a decree was issued for an Academy of Fine Arts, which was to take the place of the old painters’ association. It opened in 1766, thanks to patrician support of the leadership’s plans.

 

The Venetian artists even reaped very respectable fame outside their own country. One day, one of the doge’s representatives to the pope asked Carlo Maratta to paint a canvas for the examination room. He was surprised that they would solicit an artist in Rome since they had Gregorio Lazzarini, considered the Raphael of his school, in Venice. Although Lazzarini had instructed Giambattista Tiepolo, nothing seems less compatible with the master’s wisdom than his disciple’s wildly alluring work. Tiepolo actually has more affinities with Piazzetta, whose religious compositions are characterised by feverish movement. Amidst ruined architecture, he places characters of tormented bearing, while a violent wind raises hanging draperies and tears away at the clouds. One can especially appreciate the quick, spirited style of execution in his oeuvre that marvellously adapts itself to the fresco. Painted with an array of pale gold and fine silver hues, the expansive compositions in which he loves to mix the flight of spirits with rays of light enchant the eye to such a degree that it one forgets about any weaknesses in his drawing. In spite of his critics, Tiepolo emerges as the heir apparent to the masters of detail, one of the greatest after Veronese. During this period, a school of landscape artists was also blossoming, including artists like Luca Carlavaris and Marco Ricci from whom Canaletto was going to distinguish himself.

 

However, although painting was drying up, music was flourishing and much appreciated. Born inside churches, it later became secularized beginning in the fifteenth century. People saw it as the necessary complement to a lavish existence, the typical companion at feasts where the ear needed to be charmed as much as the eye and the tongue. The greatest colourists passionately lent themselves to music in order to distract themselves from painting, manoeuvring the violin bow and the brush with equal ease. Later on, four homes for orphaned girls supplied singers from among their ranks to both Venetian stages and to theatres in all countries. An academy of music played along the banks of the canal almost every night. The commoners were no less passionate than the nobles about these concerts, and the two sides of the canal were always completely covered with people who hurried there to listen.