Madonna in gloria con i santi

Rovetta is a village in the Val Seriana, up in the mountains above Bergamo, and in the 1730s it had no obvious claim on the most sought-after painter in Venice. The link was a family of woodcarvers. Tiepolo spent 1732 and 1733 in Bergamo frescoing the Colleoni Chapel, and there he met Andrea Fantoni, whose workshop at Rovetta had been supplying altars and carved fittings to churches across the valley for generations. The altarpiece for the parish church of All Saints was ordered from Tiepolo in 1734. It did not arrive until 1736, because the Fantoni had to cut its marble frame first. Tiepolo filled close to four metres of canvas with saints in tiers, Peter with his keys at the front of the crowd, and kneeling beside him Narno, who is said to have been the first bishop of Bergamo.