FONTEBASSO, Francesco

This is an early work by Fontebasso painted under the influence of his contemporary, Gaspare Diziani.

This fresco is on the ceiling above the monumental stairway in Palazzo Bernardi. The fresco shows groups of musicians, pages, and servants at an illusionistic balustrade turning to greet the guests.

This painting depicts one of the many events surrounding Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persian Emperor Darius in 330 BCE, which was one of the most popular narratives in 18th-century art. The motif held special interest for Francesco Fontebasso and his contemporaries for two reasons. First, the representation of people’s varied reactions to Alexander’s presence allowed for a systematic study of expression. Secondly, the historic subject was a favorite among their aristocratic patrons. It is believed that Family of Darius Before Alexander may have been one of a series of works which were executed to decorate the interior of the Palazzo Pola in Treviso.

Fontebasso chose to depict the interactions after the battle, when Alexander and Hephaestion visit Darius’s imprisoned mother and wife. Based on the two men’s similarly regal attire, the women mistook the latter for Alexander. Hephaestion gestures toward Alexander, attempting to end the confusion. Darius’s wife is terribly moved by the sight of her husband’s great enemy and is wiping her tears, while the two daughters and son look more interested than frightened.

This encounter had previously been depicted by several famed Venetian artists. The Renaissance painter Paulo Veronese produced his interpretation of this scene nearly two centuries prior to Fontebasso’s version, but several features of the work suggest a close emulation of the elder’s example. The composition and specific moment may have been familiar to Fontebasso through the famed images of Alexander with Darius’s family created by Sebastiano Ricci and Giavanni Battista Tiepolo. All of these artists included a young boy holding a shield on the lower right and the bowing figure of the queen to the left of her husband’s foes. Rather than Veronese’s crisp, linear, architectural setting, Ricci and Fontebasso both placed the figures in a tented environment of colorful, textured fabrics.

Family of Darius before Alexander, is an excellent example of the Venetian Rococo style. Fontebasso’s utilization of bold draughtsmanship and broad painting technique, with its thick impasto, give the painting its freshness, intensity, and vigor. The decorative scene seems to be taking place on stage and speaks of the exuberance and drama of the age. Like the work of Tiepolo, the painting is executed in the “Grand Manner,” and unity is given to the composition by an intense, brilliant light which illuminates the entire surface of the work.

This painting is almost certainly a bozzetto for Fontebasso’s now lost altarpiece of the same subject which originally hung in the sacristy of the church of San Paterniano, Venice.

Completing the decoration are some other images that are not connected to the subject of the principal sections. Faux colonnades that reveal glimpses of imposing classical buildings frame a variety of figures, The present picture shows a soldier conversing with a dwarf jester dressed in elegant livery, who holds a small dog.

Completing the decoration are some other images that are not connected to the subject of the principal sections. Faux colonnades that reveal glimpses of imposing classical buildings frame a variety of figures, The present picture shows a pair of lovers engaged in affectionate conversation.

The wall frescoes in the ballroom focus on the narration of episodes from the life of Queen Zenobia and represent The Banquet of Zenobia and Triumph of Aureliano. However, the interpretation of these scenes is debated.

In the banquet scene, the painter’s indebtness to Tiepolo is obvious. The scene bears a resemblance in several aspects to Tiepolo’s fresco in the Palazzo Labia.

The detail shows the small orchestra that entertains the assembly.

The detail shows the guests.

Frescoes unfold across the ceiling and walls of the vast ballroom, as well as beneath the open gallery. The ceiling fresco depicts The Magnanimity of Scipio.

This painting is the only known bozzetto for Fontebasso’s vast ceiling canvas for the Palazzo Contarini a San Beneto, Venice, where it is still visible in situ.

In the Greek mythology Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Her father lead the Greek forces against Troy. The expedition was at first prevented from sailing by unfavourable winds, so Agamemnon consulted a seer, Calchas. He was told that, because he had killed a stag sacred to Diana, he must propitiate the goddess by sacrificing his daughter to her. Iphigenia accepted her fate out of patriotic motives. According to some, at the last moment Diana substituted a stag for the human victim and carried Iphigenia away to be her priestess. The winds changed and the Greeks were able to sail.

The theme of the Holy Virgin accompanied by angels appearing to the penitent St Jerome in the desert was interpreted by Fontebasso several times. The versions of Paris (Louvre), Vienna (Bossi Collection), Padua (Museo Civico) and London, as well as the two drawings in Bologna are similar to the Budapest picture, but for a different arrangement. The saint is seated in the foreground, leaning against his book, or praying and resting while his attention is held by the lion and his eyes are peering into the distance. In the Budapest picture he finally finds peace in death, lying on the matting with a cross on his breast. All these similar small representations, some with a semicircular top, are thought to have belonged to a series of devotional pictures.

The detail shows the guests.

The wall frescoes in the ballroom focus on the narration of episodes from the life of Queen Zenobia and represent The Banquet of Zenobia and Triumph of Aureliano. However, the interpretation of these scenes is debated.

The Villa Zenobio in Santa Bona Nuova, near Treviso, was built between 1673 and 1689 and was profoundly reworked during the mid-eighteenth century when the garden wing was erected. The small entrance portego was decorated in the early years of the eighteenth century by Gregorio Lazzarini. In 1744, the villa was acquired by Sebastiano Uccelli (1695-1768) who can be credited with the renovation of the villa. He commissioned Francesco Fontebasso to paint frescoes in the ballroom of the new garden wing.

Frescoes unfold across the ceiling and walls of the vast ballroom, as well as beneath the open gallery. The ceiling fresco depicts The Magnanimity of Scipio, while the wall frescoes focus on the narration of episodes from the life of Queen Zenobia and represent The Banquet of Zenobia and Triumph of Aureliano. However, the interpretation of these scenes is debated.

The picture shows part of the ceiling in the Salone delle Nozze e Alcova in Palazzo Contarini. The cold season is captured by the portrayal of a young woman warming herself at a brazier.