The Apotheosis of Admiral Vettor Pisani

By 1743 Venice was a splendid, fading thing, a republic living on the memory of a sea power it no longer had. That year a wealthy Venetian widow, Chiara Pisani, had Giovanni Battista Tiepolo decorate a ceiling in the family palace on the Grand Canal, and for its hero he reached back nearly four centuries. The armoured figure borne up into the gold-edged clouds is taken to be Vettor Pisani, the admiral who pulled Venice through its darkest naval hour, the long war with Genoa fought around the lagoon town of Chioggia in the 1370s. The family stayed proud of him and kept giving his name to their sons. What hangs here is the small oval oil Tiepolo dashed off first to work the whole design out, before the ceiling itself, the wings of the eagle and the fall of the cloth set down in a few quick strokes. The finished ceiling stayed in Venice. This study made its way to Tokyo, where a museum bought it in 1989.