(2 of 2)
On Tiepolo's canvases, every scene became a tableau as lively as any opera bouffe, his every room a stage across which strutted the likes of Orpheus, Eurydice, Scipio, Antony and Cleopatra. As for his ceilings, they were populated with gods, goddesses—and God himself. To be sure, Tiepolo had the live theater of his day to draw on, but his imagina tion more than matched anything the Venetian dramatists might conceive. For one fresco in the cathedral at Udine, he invented an annunciation scene that does not exist in the Bible—an angel appearing to Sarah—brought Abraham's aged wife boldly to life with two prominent front teeth and a multitude of wrinkles.
For the Ca' Dolfin cycle, he turned from the Bible to Roman history. Inscriptions in Latin on some of the paintings reveal that his major source was the works of Roman Historian Annaeus Florus. The events he chose were designed to flatter the Dolfin family, who considered themselves spiritually, if not actually, descendants of the far-off conquering Caesars. The Metropolitan's Battle of Vercellae portrays the triumph of the Romans over the Germanic invaders. The towering 18-ft. Triumph of Marius shows the ruler of the North African kingdom of Numidia, Jugurtha, having been betrayed by his father-in-law, led before the chariot of the Roman conqueror Marius (see above and color opposite). Strangely it is the haughty pride of the conquered and his sorrowing consort that gains the viewer's sympathy, not gloating Caesar.
The Storming of Carthage re-creates the famed battle of 146 B.C. in which the Romans demolished the wealthiest city of the ancient world (opposite and below). So as not to stay the surge of battle, Tiepolo sketched the fallen citadel of Carthage with brilliant swiftness. To the magnificent actors who command the center of his stage, Tiepolo, by contrast, paid meticulous attention, orchestrating flowing robes, thundering horses and plundered artifacts into a pageant that would have done justice to Venice itself.
A triumph in themselves, the Dolfin murals are a singularly prophetic foretaste of what would follow in Tiepolo's career. The wide blue skies would open up into infinities of space, the rippling Roman standards give way to the beating of angels' wings. The white horse charging over the Carthaginian dead presages all the great white quadrigae that would soon soar through the heavens. He had already proved his mastery in foreshortening figures to anchor them in awesome spaces. Then, as if to make unmistakably clear who was producing this show, Tiepolo painted a portrait of himself—just to the left of Jugurtha—peering out from the sidelines like some great theatrical producer surveying the reaction of his audience.
*The rest of the cycle is today divided between Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, which has two works, and Leningrad's Hermitage, which has five.