LAZZARINI, Gregorio

The picture shows one of the scenes on the walls of the entrance portego.

The three white faux-rocaille frames that occupy the spaces between the columns contain scenes of poetic-mythological love stories. In the first compartment Angelica and Medorus, the two lovers taken from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, are shown at the moment when Angelica is about to carve both their names in the bark of a tree, an act that will lead to Orlando’s madness.

The subject of Dido and the bull’s hide is taken from the Aeneid and illustrates both the ingenuity of Dido and tells the story of the founding of Carthage. After fleeing Tyre and landing on the shores of North Africa, Dido bartered with the local king Iarbas to acquire some land. Attempting to drive a hard bargain, Iarbas agreed to give Dido as much land as the hide of a bull could cover. However, Dido cut a bull’s hide into thin strips and used them to outline a large area of land, thereby outwitting Iarbas and securing some living space for her and her followers. It was on that site that Dido built Carthage and became its queen.

The trompe l’oeil details that crop up all along the skirting board are noteworthy. One of these, a dog curiously observing a lizard clinging to a column, is shown in the present picture.

The Sala dello Scrutinio (Voting Hall) is the second largest hall of the Doge’s Palace. The balloting and secret votes of the magistracies and the doge took place in this hall with the very complicated systems that the Venetian Republic had created to avoid intrigues and subterfuge during the elections and, above all, to ensure that the vote could not be bought especially from the poor nobility in favour of its richer equivalent.

In around 1694, an arch (Arco Morosini), designed by Antonio Gaspari, was raised by the Serenissima in the Sala dello Scrutinio in remembrance of the Doge Morosini’s merits and the clamorous victories over the Turks. Gregorio Lazzarini was commissioned to decorate the arch. The paintings on the arch, Doge Morosini Offers the Reconquered Morea to Venice and Merit Offers the Command to Doge Morosini, represent an allegory of the election of Doge Morosini and the nomination of the four sea captains. The four staffs of command on the latter painting, carried by two winged cherubs, represents the four sea captains.

The picture shows one of the scenes on the walls of the entrance portego.

The three white faux-rocaille frames that occupy the spaces between the columns contain scenes of poetic-mythological love stories. In the second compartment, a feminised Hercules, leaning against a classical ruin, holds Omphale’s spindle, while she amuses herself by putting on the hero’s lion skin. A cupid enlivens the scene, playing a drum.

Below the frame a domesticated parrot tied to a small chain is depicted.

Sisera was a cruel Canaanite leader who ruled the Israelites for twenty years. Barak defeated his nine hundred charioteers by a surprise Israelite attack. Sisera escaped and sought refuge in the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She gave the terrified Canaanite sanctuary. When he fell asleep, she drove a tent peg into his brain. The act fulfilled the prediction of Debora, prophetess and Israelite leader, who foresaw that a woman would slay Sisera.

The Sala dello Scrutinio (Voting Hall) is the second largest hall of the Doge’s Palace. The balloting and secret votes of the magistracies and the doge took place in this hall with the very complicated systems that the Venetian Republic had created to avoid intrigues and subterfuge during the elections and, above all, to ensure that the vote could not be bought especially from the poor nobility in favour of its richer equivalent.

In around 1694, an arch (Arco Morosini), designed by Antonio Gaspari, was raised by the Serenissima in the Sala dello Scrutinio in remembrance of the Doge Morosini’s merits and the clamorous victories over the Turks. Gregorio Lazzarini was commissioned to decorate the arch. The paintings on the arch, Doge Morosini Offers the Reconquered Morea to Venice and Merit Offers the Command to Doge Morosini, represent an allegory of the election of Doge Morosini and the nomination of the four sea captains. The four staffs of command on the latter painting, carried by two winged cherubs, represents the four sea captains.

This interesting work by the teacher of Giambattista Tiepolo shows how the taste for paintings of mythological and literary subjects continued from the Renaissance into the luminous art of the eighteenth century.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Cristoph Willibald Gluck: Orfeo, Act I, Orpheus’ aria in G Major

The subject was inspired by the 16th-century epic poem ‘Gerusalemme Liberata’ (Jerusalem Delivered) by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). Rinaldo and Armida are a pair of lovers in the poem which is an idealized account of the first Crusade which ended with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the establishment of a Christian kingdom. Armida, a beautiful virgin witch, had been sent by Satan (whose aid the Saracens had enlisted0 to bring about the Crusaders’ undoing by sorcery. She sought revenge on the Christian prince Rinaldo after he had rescued his companions whom she had changed into monsters. The pastoral story of hate turned of love, of the lovers’ dalliance in Armida’s magic kingdom, and Rinaldo’s final desertion of her, forms a sequence of themes that were widely popular with Italian and French artists in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Two arias, Rinaldo, Acts II and III

The subject was inspired by the 16th-century epic poem ‘Gerusalemme Liberata’ (Jerusalem Delivered) by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). Rinaldo and Armida are a pair of lovers in the poem which is an idealized account of the first Crusade which ended with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the establishment of a Christian kingdom. Armida, a beautiful virgin witch, had been sent by Satan (whose aid the Saracens had enlisted0 to bring about the Crusaders’ undoing by sorcery. She sought revenge on the Christian prince Rinaldo after he had rescued his companions whom she had changed into monsters. The pastoral story of hate turned of love, of the lovers’ dalliance in Armida’s magic kingdom, and Rinaldo’s final desertion of her, forms a sequence of themes that were widely popular with Italian and French artists in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Two arias, Rinaldo, Acts II and III

The picture shows one of the scenes on the walls of the entrance portego.

The three white faux-rocaille frames that occupy the spaces between the columns contain scenes of poetic-mythological love stories. The final scene in the third compartment is inspired by Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. The sorceress Armida and the Christian prince Rinaldo are seen during a dalliance in a woodland setting.

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.

The wall surface is punctuated by a series of illusionistic, white Corinthian columns that stand on the low skirting board circling the perimeter of the room. The three white faux-rocaille frames that occupy the spaces between the columns contain scenes of poetic-mythological love stories, narrated in a neo-sixteenth-century pictorial manner, halfway between Titian and Veronese. The scenes depict Angelica and Medorus, Hercules and Omphale, and Rinaldo and Armida. The fresco on the ceiling, Eros Piercing a Young Woman, is now largely repainted.

The frescoes were clumsily whitewashed with lime in the mid-nineteenth century, they were bought to light during a thorough restoration in the early twentieth century.