The Three Angels Appearing to Abraham

By 1773 the warm, sweeping style of the older Venetian painters was giving way to a cooler, more sculptural taste, and this canvas sits right on that turn. The subject is old: three travellers arrive at Abraham's tent by the oaks of Mamre and tell him his aged wife Sarah will bear a son. Giandomenico models the central angel's body on the Apollo Belvedere, the antique statue every student then drew, and lays the figures out with a clean, deliberate precision. It was the last painting the Scuola della Carita ordered for its own rooms, for the hall of its new chancellor's office. That confraternity's building is the one that now holds the Accademia, so the picture hangs only steps from the wall it was painted for.