1520-25 Marble, height: 56 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna In Venice, during the closing decades of the 15th century, a pure classicising style, derived from Andrea Mantegna, was introduced. Tullio Lombardo turned to classical sculpture proper for his guiding force. His portraits of young couples in high relief (the other is in the Ca' d'Oro in Venice) were inspired by antique funerary busts, but the sculptor completely rejected naturalism. The simplicity of the volumes and the sobriety of expression are set off by decorative refinements which depart from the antique schema. They include embroidered hairnets in the hair and meticulously designed sinuous locks. His Bacchus and Ariadne shows him at his most lyrical, under the influence of the Humanism at the Gonzaga court at Mantua, where he worked for Isabella d'Este in 1523 and 1527
Painting ID:: 63552
Giambattista Pittoni 1720s
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions 171 X 130 cm
cyf Bacchus and Ariadne (1687?C1767) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period, active mainly in his native Venice.
Pittoni is best known for his "grand-manner" canvases depicting religious, historical, and mythological subjects (such as Sophonisba and Polyxena). He was a co-founder of the official painter's academy in Venice (in competition to the old fraglia or painter's guild), the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, and he succeeded as President (1758?C1761) his contemporary Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Pittoni never left his native Venice, but completed commissions from German, Polish, Russian, and Austrian patrons. His mature palette was noted, as was Tiepolo's, for his lightness of tone. Besides Tiepolo, Pittoni's influences were Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Sebastiano Ricci, and Antonio Balestra. His paintings were of a Rococo style, but later became more sedate in their approach towards Neoclassicism.
