Institution of the Rosary

In May 1737 Tiepolo signed a contract with the Dominican friars of a new church on the Zattere, the sunny waterfront along the south edge of Venice, promising to fresco its whole ceiling. The church is Santa Maria del Rosario, usually called the Gesuati. This is the oil sketch for its central scene, the Institution of the Rosary, in which Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, hands the rosary down to the faithful from a great flight of steps. Tiepolo painted the finished ceiling in a single burst, roughly a year of work across 1738 and 1739, and it is still in place above the nave today. In the sketch you can already see the trick he used up there, figures and steps plunging down toward you as though the roof had opened onto the sky.