Consular Meeting

In 1740 Filippo Florio, a count from Udine, asked to join the Order of Malta as a knight. The town then belonged to the Venetian Republic, and the knights' priory in Venice turned him down, ruling that no local noble qualified. After an appeal to Pope Benedict XIV, the dispute went before the council on Malta itself. There, in September 1748, Count Antonio di Montegnacco, a Friulian churchman, won admission for Florio and, with him, for the whole Udine nobility. Back home, Montegnacco commissioned this picture of his moment before the council, and sent Tiepolo so detailed an account of the scene that the historian Vincenzo Joppi, who later published it, said a reader would hardly need the painting. Early writers gave the work to Giambattista Tiepolo alone. From 1939 some critics saw his son Giandomenico in it, and a few gave him all of it, dating it around 1760. The city museum's own account treats it as a joint work of about 1750.