Three years after its
foundation, the Venice International Foundation is still
pursuing its activity of cultural promotion, of study and
research, in close collaboration with the Venetian Civic
Museums.
Major objectives have already been achieved, mainly centred on Ca' Rezzonico; the Cafè and the Browning mezzanin (our office) have been restored, a sign-system has been created for the Museum, the VIF has helped to organise and set up two exhibitions on porcelain and Giandomenico Tiepolo's New World has been restored. To these we would like to add new exciting challenges to be completed by the end of the year 2000.
Finally, we propose to complete the restoration of the frescoes that Giandomenico Tiepolo created in the second half of the eighteenth century in the villa owned by the Tiepolo family at Zianigo, whose rooms have been recreated at Ca' Rezzonico.
Franca Coin, Chairman
The Venice International Foundation ------------Venezia, maggio 1999
Punchinello in expectation: the disappointment of history
Apart from the scenes in the oratory which deal with themes from the Old and New Testament and episodes from the life of St Jerome Miani, the walls of the villa of Zianigo contained a range of images, scenes and representations that were far from easy to grasp as a whole. However, there was a unifying theme that guided the artist in his long work here: a work which, exceptionally, appears to have been uncommissioned and was thus free &endash; or rather guided only by the imagination, inventiveness and whim of the artist himself, Giandomenico Tiepolo.
After beginning the work in its profane part with a ceiling, datable around the 1750s, representing the "Triumph of the Arts", the artist continued with a scene from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata ("Rinaldo before the Simulacrum of Armida"), symbolic and allegorical representations (Roman scenes, pagan sacrifices, satyrs and fauns, centaurs, bacchanals etc.), scenes of every-day life and, most famous of all, the Punchinellos, masqueraders and courtly scenes.
It was these last themes &endash; Modern Life and Punchinello &endash; that made Giandomenico most famous. His own personal poetics emerged clearly, proving him an inspired artist, with shafts of creative originality and intuition.
The commedia frescoed by Giandomenico in the villa is extremely wide-ranging, thematically at least: the whole complex presents a kind of recapitulation of Tiepolesque art in many of its different and singular aspects; at the same time it shows how a certain season and taste have been culturally superseded: it is almost a pictorial testament which, while showing appreciation of the past, conceals neither the dramatic nature of the present nor the incognito of the future (the frescoes, it is worth pointing out &endash; although without undue emphasis &endash;, were painted shortly after events that were to prove fatal to Venice, marking the end of the Republic); but he was able to observe all this with a disenchanted, ironic, even sarcastic eye, seeing in the foibles of men also their sorrows, the passing of fashions and tastes, of passions and hopes, and the survival of a primaeval, spontaneous will to live (if not exactly a joie de vivre) and to look ahead. . .
However, there remains something else: a final message that Giandomenico reserves for his host of Punchinellos, his promenades, his cold, bold galanteries, his tavern-obscenities, his macabre or grotesque landscapes.
The metamorphosis of Punchinello testifies to a great disappointment of history. Both for the Major History of ancient heroism and great deeds, and for the minor history of our modern Olympus, a brief period of deceitful myths and pigmies dressed up as demi-gods.
Giandomenico's "thought" is all in a negative key: but not the heroic and titanic negative of Piranesi's ruins, nor the sublime and tragic negative of Goya, nor even the more engagé, secular, lucid and raging negative of Carlo Lodoli. The light of the past projects only gigantic and impenetrable shadows onto the future: the space of history is wiped out and reality is reduced to the thickness of a blade, or the inconsistency of the rope on which a few drunken Punchinellos swing, like crazed cinders from a dumb deflagration.
Giandomenico Romanelli
Major objectives have already been achieved, mainly centred on Ca' Rezzonico; the Cafè and the Browning mezzanin (our office) have been restored, a sign-system has been created for the Museum, the VIF has helped to organise and set up two exhibitions on porcelain and Giandomenico Tiepolo's New World has been restored. To these we would like to add new exciting challenges to be completed by the end of the year 2000.
Finally, we propose to complete the restoration of the frescoes that Giandomenico Tiepolo created in the second half of the eighteenth century in the villa owned by the Tiepolo family at Zianigo, whose rooms have been recreated at Ca' Rezzonico.
Franca Coin, Chairman
The Venice International Foundation ------------Venezia, maggio 1999
Punchinello in expectation: the disappointment of history
Apart from the scenes in the oratory which deal with themes from the Old and New Testament and episodes from the life of St Jerome Miani, the walls of the villa of Zianigo contained a range of images, scenes and representations that were far from easy to grasp as a whole. However, there was a unifying theme that guided the artist in his long work here: a work which, exceptionally, appears to have been uncommissioned and was thus free &endash; or rather guided only by the imagination, inventiveness and whim of the artist himself, Giandomenico Tiepolo.
After beginning the work in its profane part with a ceiling, datable around the 1750s, representing the "Triumph of the Arts", the artist continued with a scene from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata ("Rinaldo before the Simulacrum of Armida"), symbolic and allegorical representations (Roman scenes, pagan sacrifices, satyrs and fauns, centaurs, bacchanals etc.), scenes of every-day life and, most famous of all, the Punchinellos, masqueraders and courtly scenes.
It was these last themes &endash; Modern Life and Punchinello &endash; that made Giandomenico most famous. His own personal poetics emerged clearly, proving him an inspired artist, with shafts of creative originality and intuition.
The commedia frescoed by Giandomenico in the villa is extremely wide-ranging, thematically at least: the whole complex presents a kind of recapitulation of Tiepolesque art in many of its different and singular aspects; at the same time it shows how a certain season and taste have been culturally superseded: it is almost a pictorial testament which, while showing appreciation of the past, conceals neither the dramatic nature of the present nor the incognito of the future (the frescoes, it is worth pointing out &endash; although without undue emphasis &endash;, were painted shortly after events that were to prove fatal to Venice, marking the end of the Republic); but he was able to observe all this with a disenchanted, ironic, even sarcastic eye, seeing in the foibles of men also their sorrows, the passing of fashions and tastes, of passions and hopes, and the survival of a primaeval, spontaneous will to live (if not exactly a joie de vivre) and to look ahead. . .
However, there remains something else: a final message that Giandomenico reserves for his host of Punchinellos, his promenades, his cold, bold galanteries, his tavern-obscenities, his macabre or grotesque landscapes.
The metamorphosis of Punchinello testifies to a great disappointment of history. Both for the Major History of ancient heroism and great deeds, and for the minor history of our modern Olympus, a brief period of deceitful myths and pigmies dressed up as demi-gods.
Giandomenico's "thought" is all in a negative key: but not the heroic and titanic negative of Piranesi's ruins, nor the sublime and tragic negative of Goya, nor even the more engagé, secular, lucid and raging negative of Carlo Lodoli. The light of the past projects only gigantic and impenetrable shadows onto the future: the space of history is wiped out and reality is reduced to the thickness of a blade, or the inconsistency of the rope on which a few drunken Punchinellos swing, like crazed cinders from a dumb deflagration.
Giandomenico Romanelli