Gaspare Diziani
Italian, 1689 - 1767
Italian painter and draughtsman. His earliest training was in Belluno with Antonio Lazzarini (1672–1732), the last exponent in the Veneto of Baroque tenebrism. Having moved to Venice, he joined the workshop of Gregorio Lazzarini and later that of Sebastiano Ricci, who was in Venice until 1715 and exerted the strongest influence on his development; presumably Diziani was familiar with Ricci’s many paintings in Belluno before becoming his pupil. Between 1710 and 1720 he painted a group of eight pictures that included the Mary Magdalene for S Stefano, Belluno, and the Entry into Jerusalem for S Teodoro, Venice. His speed of production and technical assurance are demonstrated especially in his preparatory oil sketches, with colour applied in rapid and spirited penlike strokes. He was also working as a scenery painter in many Venetian theatres, an employment that led to commissions first in Munich (1717) and later in Dresden, where he was highly acclaimed. According to Canal, Diziani was invited to Rome by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in 1726, to paint a ‘magnificent decoration for the church of S Lorenzo in Damaso’; Longhi, however, placed this visit earlier than the journeys to Munich and Dresden. The decoration is now known only through an engraving by Claude Vasconi (see Pavanello, fig.).
Diziani’s first known signed and dated painting is the Ecstasy of St Francis (1727; Belluno, S Rocco), clearly influenced by Ricci. His works reveal two contrasting tendencies that remain evident throughout his oeuvre and make it difficult to establish a chronology: a refined and geometric style, inspired by Ricci; and a style inspired by the more rounded forms of Classical sculpture. The St Augustine Triumphing over Heresy (Venice, Accad. Pitt. & Scul.), the Beheading of St Eurosia (priv. col.; ex-Villa Rinaldi-Barberini, Asolo) and the Virgin of the Carmelites, painted on the ceiling of the parish church in Mira, were all executed before 1732. In 1733 he painted such frescoes as the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt and the Massacre of the Innocents in the sacristy of S Stefano, Venice; these adopt pictorial motifs from Ricci and reveal an impetuous, almost violent style. Probably dating from the same period are the Martyrdom of SS Felix and Fortunatus (Chioggia Cathedral), two paintings of Carmelite subjects (Venice, S Maria del Carmelo) and the grandiose and theatrical Conversion of St Paul (Padua, S Giustina).
In 1746 Diziani painted frescoes of mythological and allegorical subjects in the Palazzo Riccati, Castelfranco Veneto, and the following year, with some help from assistants, in the Palazzo Spineda in Treviso (all in situ). The small but elaborate and light-filled Annunciation (Belluno, Mus. Civ.) also dates from 1747. In 1751 he accepted commissions to paint the fresco of the Trinity in Glory with Dominican Saints for S Bartolomeo, Bergamo, and the canvas of God the Father with SS Francis and Antony for the baldacchino of the Basilica di S Antonio (il Santo) in Padua (Padua, Mus. Antoniano). Both these large-scale works exhibit an extraordinary passion and liveliness of expression, possibly influenced by the work of Carlo Carlone (ii), active in Bergamo a few years earlier. The Blessed Virgin and Saints (1753; Condino Cathedral) marks an important change of direction towards a more Rococo style, as was being adopted by Giambattista Tiepolo and Giovanni Battista Pittoni. This is equally apparent in such altarpieces as the Adoration of the Shepherds (Clusone, S Maria Assunta), the Assumption of the Virgin with Saints (Belluno, S Gervasio) and those sent to the Friuli, to Tolmezzo Cathedral, S Pietro ai Volti in Cividale and S Vito al Tagliamento Cathedral. These works, all from 1755, are characterized by a transparent luminosity, an absence of chiaroscuro contrast and, in some cases, a brighter palette. Their rhetoric is softened by a nervous handling of the curving folds of drapery. The altarpiece of 1757 in S Floriano, Storo, and the Saints of the Counter-Reformation (Belluno Cathedral) are close in style and probably also in date. The Madonna of the Rosary (1757; parish church of Završje, Croatia), with its vivacious small scenes of the 15 mysteries of the rosary around the border, underpins the chronology of Diziani’s work in the 1760s and 1770s. In 1760, with the assistance of his sons, Diziani decorated the mezzanine of the Villa Rinaldi-Barberini. An enthusiasm for narrative led him to paint decorative cycles on both sacred and secular themes, among the latter the Stories of Alexander (Paris, de Balkany priv. col.), Amphitrite, Pan and Syrinx (Como, priv. col.), Thetis and Vulcan (Vienna, priv. col.), Moses Trampling on Pharaoh’s Crown (Warsaw, N. Mus.)—works in which his early experience of painting for the theatre found a mature and somewhat rhetorical expression. His last works, such as the ceiling (1760–62) of the Scuola di S Giovanni Evangelista, Venice, look forward to Neo-classicism.
Drawings form a significant part of Diziani’s oeuvre. A large collection of them, possibly the largest by an individual Venetian 18th-century artist, is held at the Museo Correr, Venice. Their uneven quality and varied techniques may encourage doubts over their attribution, but they nevertheless document an unremitting activity. The drawings are occasionally more lively than the finished paintings, some of which appear suppressed by academic compositional requirements. Among his drawings engraved as book illustrations are those for an edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy published by Zatta (Venice, 1757). With Francesco Fontebasso, his collaborator at this time on decorations in the palazzi Belloni and Contarini, he also provided illustrations for an edition of Palladio’s Quattro libri dell’architettura (Venice 1740–60), notably the frontispiece representing an Allegory of Architecture (1740) and Architecture with Sculpture and Painting at the start of Book IV. He is also documented as an official restorer of public paintings. In 1760 he succeeded Tiepolo and Pittoni as president of the Accademia di Pittura Veneziana, of which he had been a founder in 1755. He was re-elected to this post for a two-year term in 1766 but died the following year, in a café in the Piazza S Marco in Venice. He was married in 1731 and had ten children. Two of his sons became painters and frequently worked with him: Giuseppe Diziani (1732–1803), a history painter, and Antonio Diziani (1737–97), a landscape painter.
Sergio Claut. "Diziani, Gaspare." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T022996 (accessed April 10, 2012).
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